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A LITTLE LOWER THAN 

THE ANGELS 

BY 

CLARENCE LATHBUBY. 

AUTHOR OF "GOD WINNING US." 

WITH A PREFATORY VERSE 
BY 

MARY A. LATHBURY. 



" Buonarotti seems to have intended to prove by them [his human 
forms] that the human body has a language inexhaustible in its 
symbolism— every limb, every feature, and every attitude being a 
word full of significance to those who comprehend, just as music is a 
language whereof each note and chord and phrase has correspondence 
with the spiritual world. To him a well-shaped hand or throat or 
head, a neck superbly poised on an athletic chest, the sway of the 
trunk above the hips, the starting of the muscles on the flank, the 
tendons of the aukle, the outline of the shoulder when the arm is 
raised, the backward bending of the loins, the curves of a woman's 
breast, the contour of a body careless in repose or strained for action, 
were all words pregnant with profoundest meaning, whereby fit 
utterance might be given to the thoughts that raise men near to God. 
Paint or carve the body of a man, and as you do it nobly, you will 
give the measure of both highest thought and most impassioned 
deed."— John Addington Symonds. 



THE SWEDENBORG PUBLISHING ASSOCIATION, 

GERMANTOWN", PA. 
1901. 



•>.*.:• 






THE LIBRARY OF 
CONGRESS, 

Two Copies Received 

MAY. 28 1901 

Copyright entry 

CLASSTa* XXc. N». 

COPY 3. 



Copyright 

By THE SWEDENBORG PUBLISHING ASSOCIATION, 

1901. 



WM. F FELL & CO., 
ELECTROTYPERS AND 
PHILADELPHI 



THE HOLY HOUSE. 

' The measure of a man, that is, of the angel.' 
Hast thou, taught to look within, 
Seen the House of Life begin, 
Molded from the mother-earth 
In the miracle of birth, 
Yet, like Israel's early shrine, 
Inly bright with the divine ? 

Hast thou seen the life aspire 
Like a tree, a fane, a fire, 
Lifting from the parent sod 
Strength and beauty back to God ? 

Hast thou marked the service done 
Hour by hour from sun to sun 
By the lowly Levite band, 
Swift of foot and skilled of hand ? 

Hast thou heard all voices come 
To the niches 'neath the dome, 
Human cry, or song, or call 
Seeking a confessional ? 

Hast thou seen the stars that rise 
In the heaven of the eyes, 
Or the glory of the dawn 
When the starlight is withdrawn ? 

Hast thou seen the temple veil 
With the glory glow and pale, 
Or beneath its seamless white. 
Half concealed from human sight, 
iii 



The Holy House. 

Heard the rhythmic murmur low 
Where the hidden rivers flow ? 

Hast thou heard the harp that holds 
In its soft and vibrant folds 
All the songs of all the birds, 
All the silver-sandaled words 
That the players will who wait 
Far within the temple gate ? 

Dost thou know the two who sit 
In the Holy Place of it, 
Thought and Feeling, born above 
Of immortal Truth and Love ? 

Then thine eyes have seen indeed 
Him who bears the golden reed, 
Holds the height, the breadth, the plan 
Of the Angel in the Man. 



CONTENTS. 



PAGE 

I.— A Man Within a Man, 1 

Xfgbt powers 

II.— A System of Light, 17 

III.— Windows of the Soul, 32 

IV. — The Auditory Lamp, 46 

V. — The Tree of Knowledge, 62 

VI. — The Seamless Dress, 76 

Xife powers 

VII.— The Life Within the Life, 91 

VIII.— That Mystical Fluid, 105 

mmtiee 

IX.— The Gospel of the Face, 121 

X.— The Laryngeal Harp, 136 

XI.— The Life Line in the Palm, 151 

XII.— Finis, 168 

Bpilogfsm 

XIII.— The Wondrous Interchange, 185 



-^^^^o-^ 



A LITTLE LOWER THAN THE 

ANGELS. 



->K< 



A LITTLE LOWER THAN 
THE ANGELS. 



i. 

A MAN WITHIN A MAN. 



I am the tadpole of an archangel. — Victor Hugo. 

We come to deal with the most interesting 
subject in existence — ourselves. We are a 
wonderful being — the highest effort of the In- 
finite One. What science and revelation have 
to say about us must be of transcendent interest 
to us. What we are, whence we came, whither 
bound, sink out of sight all other questions. 
The study of man, an item in the universe 
second only to the Almighty, is the noblest 
problem that can be conceived — the practical 
bearings of which are beyond all others on 
the roll of research. Here there has been 
1 1 



2 A Little Lower than the Angels. 

much confusion of thought. The physiologist 
has called the body of man, man ; the theoso- 
phist has said that the soul of man is man ; the 
intellectualist, that mind is man ; the utilitarian, 
that action is man — the forthgoing of the united 
powers that compose man is man. 

But we are tripartite ; we are all these blended 
into one. We are these inseparable and indis- 
soluble. Like God, whose lesser duplicate we 
are, we are a divine trinity. We are not a 
body by itself; nor a mind by itself; nor a 
soul by itself; nor a collection of acts — but a 
man. Take either separately, — body, mind, 
history, — and we contemplate but a fragment 
of a man. As we gaze upon ourselves, and 
into ourselves, we behold the direct handiwork 
of Deity. We see the fingers of the Mighty 
One touching a million faculties and organs. 
" Put thy shoes from off thy feet, for the place 
whereon thou standest is holy ground." 

We are an epitome of the earth and heaven. 
Not "dust thou art and to dust thou shalt 
return" — but spirit robed in dust, dust in- 
carnate with spirit, and spirit woven into its 
very texture. Spirit sweeping out from God, 
and by a series of discrete steps, by marvelous 



A Man Within a Man. 3 

affinities, incorporating the whole round uni- 
verse into its sphere, and returning whence it 
came. The thrilling fact is this — we are the 
builded aroma of the creation, the music of all 
spheres. We are the planet sublimated and 
transfigured. How few have any conception 
of this. The introduction of many a man to 
himself is like the introduction of a savage to 
a palace. Getting a glimpse of himself, he is 
tempted to adore. " Ye are the temple of the 
Holy Spirit." When he looks down the cor- 
ridors of his being and sees a million million 
apartments in beautiful arrangement, room 
added to room, organ to organ, faculty to fac- 
ulty ; each lighted by truth, and warmed by 
love ; through all of which God roams, where 
His steps are continually heard, he is lifted up, 
and, in his own estimation, he becomes another 
being. 

We are not the earth ; but the earth is in 
us. To make the first cell possible, uncounted 
ages of preparation must pass. Suns must be 
broken up into planets, planets must cool, the 
agents of geology must toil millennium after 
millennium over the globe to fit it as a dwelling- 
place for the coming man. Then the earth and 



4 A Little Lower than the Angels. 

sky was gathered up into a beautiful temple of 
the soul. Not only the earth is in us — but 
something above the earth. Spirit is in us. 
The material of the body has been collected 
from an unknown multitude of the lowlier 
forms of life. But something has been super- 
added and interfused. Spirit has been infilled 
with matter. The bird eats the worm, and 
the worm is transfigured into bird — into plum- 
age, song, flight. The worm sings, the worm 
soars. Man eats the turnip, the partridge, the 
ox ; he drinks from the cooling spring ; he 
breathes in the atmosphere (the planet in solu- 
tion), and they become the brain of genius, 
the heart of love. They write the twenty- 
third psalm ; they build the dome of St. Peter's ; 
they produce the " Creation " of Handel. The 
human spirit bows itself, takes up a handful 
of dust and glorifies it, as the sun kisses the 
sod, and the sod blossoms with flowers. We 
are not the soil, yet the soil is in us. The 
spirit is talismanic in its transformations. In 
the night and in the day it pursues that subtile 
and exquisite mingling of soul and clay build- 
ing the inexplicable creature we call ourselves. 
Flesh is put on and off without an instant's 



A Man Within a Man. 5 

pause from conception to dissolution. The 
learned estimate is, that in seven years we have 
donned an entirely new suit of mortal clothing. 
And yet that which is put off has lost some- 
thing. The spirit has extracted a nameless 
something, a mystical limbus, from the soil 
that passes into itself, and is carried to heaven. 
It has taken something ; and yet left every- 
thing. It has gotten not merely heat, light, 
air, earth ; but love, intelligence, faith, patience 
— in short, all divine qualities have become 
constitutional in us, fixed in us, blended by a 
chemistry that passes knowledge. These in- 
dividualities, grouped, compose what we call 
society — the Maximus Homo, man gathered up 
from all ages and worlds into his greater 
humanity — a heaven out of the human race. 

So here we are — a complexity that holds in 
its parenthesis everything that has been, is, or 
shall be. The earth is in us — we are Geology, 
Botany, Zoology ; and heaven is in us too. 
The Lord is in us, and angels are in us. We 
climb all the stairs that reach to God. We 
are the precious link that joins the cosmos 
with the supernal. We are a transcript of 
both God, and the world. Yet there is an 



6 A Little Lower than the Angels. 

outer us that will be sloughed, as the chrysalis 
discards its shell. Without argument we 
recognize the man within the man : the man 
within that shall go on — the man without that 
shall be left behind as a contribution to the 
soil. Having made good use of it, we leave it 
as building material for coming spirits, who 
must clothe and unclothe themselves with like 
draperies. " We think of the soul as a com- 
plete, and in nowise disembodied man, within 
the known embodied man." We know we 
are master of the body. We know the soul 
resides in us as queen. The predominant per- 
sonality within, that no one has ever seen or 
handled, — that which even we ourselves see 
not, even as through a glass darkly, invisible 
as God, — is, we know, the man within the 
man. Without this we are not man, but ani- 
mal. Man in Sanskrit means " The Thinker." 
When Eve exclaimed that she had " gotten a 
man from the Lord," she knew her offspring 
was radically different from the brutes about 
her. 

The instinctive and willing subjection of 
everything material to the impalpable confirms 
the truth of the man within the man. Almost 



A Man Within a Man. 7 

spontaneously we speak of the outer as some- 
thing distinct from us. We say " my body," 
" my hand," " my foot," " my tooth." When 
we lose a limb by amputation, we never think 
of having lost a part of ourselves. But rather 
what has a relation to the soul, like the tool to 
the hand. The young man drives his body 
with whip and spur. He commands — it obeys. 
The old man speaks cheerfully of it as a dulled 
instrument, or worn-out vehicle that will soon 
be surrendered for a new one. He will enter 
the sepulchre, leave it folded there, as Jesus 
did the cloths that wrapped him, and come 
forth clad anew. And the idea of having to 
feed it, dress it, exercise it, humor it — has 
fallen into familiar expressions, and often com- 
plaints. The task of carrying it about with 
us everywhere (as we do our wardrobe), of 
keeping it cool or warm, of laying it away 
every night in the dark to rest, of waiting 
patiently for it to recuperate its powers when 
indisposed, that we may use it again, — is more 
tragic than amusing. 

The soul being the architect and builder of 
the body, the body naturally becomes the soul's 
counterpart and expositor. What we see upon 



8 A Little Lower than the Angels. 

the surface — the gesticulations, expressions, 
and emotions that sweep over the body like 
clouds and sunshine — are but the revelation 
and utterance of that within us we call alive. 
If we could descend the stairs of our being, 
and enter every department, we should find the 
spirit of God (and man) breaking into cell, and 
nerve, and organ, and tissue, multiplying and 
molding the outer part of us — God in us to 
will and to do. We should find everywhere 
His angels busily at work sculpturing the dome 
of the brain, rounding the columns of the 
limbs, laying the nerves of intercommunica- 
tion under abysses and over eminences, to the 
utmost boundaries of ourselves. By a magic 
that has never been fathomed we should behold 
the invisible Potter shaping the visible clay. 
We should meet angelic squadrons with love 
in their faces, with ineffable skill acquired 
in heavenly places, guarding the life, and pre- 
siding everywhere. We are builded from 
within, and not from without, and the struc- 
ture is never completed, dedicated, and for- 
saken by the mind that planned it ; but every 
instant, at every minutest point, creation pro- 
ceeds — and God is present. We are a temple 



A Man Within a Man. 9 

continually crowded with angels — and every 
act within it is an act of worship. 

Therefore the body naturally expounds the 
spirit. As the instrument expounds the player, 
as the speech is the speaker made vocal, as the 
song is the soul of the singer breathing over 
the laryngeal harp, as the cathedral from porch 
to altar, to facade and minaret, figures the 
vision of the man within the man. The cathe- 
dral must first be in the soul before it can be 
on the earth. Its foundations must first be laid 
in the human heart. Its grandeur is but a 
dim and inadequate interpretation of the gran- 
deur of the hidden architect. So the outer us 
is an interpretation of the inner us. It can do 
only what is given it to do. The body is the 
commentary of the spirit. Every act, every 
word, every light and shadow moving over the 
face, every genuflection, is a biography of that 
within. Just as nature tells us about God. 
The material world has a million preachers. 
We can not go out without seeing sermons, lis- 
tening to sermons. Everything that creeps, 
walks, or flies ; yes, everything that grows ; 
more, even the rocks and hills we call mute, 
are calling to us, and endeavoring to tell us 



10 A Little Lower than the Angels. 

about God. The world is a vast temple with 
many altars, in which prayer and song never 
die away. The universe is the forthgoing of 
the Infinite One — this is why it is so grand 
and sweet. This is why it is good. The face 
is a map of the soul, and its variations inter- 
pret the soul's moods and emotions. The hands 
are but the soul's tools — they are the soul in 
action. When they are clasped in prayer, when 
they hold the pen of inspiration, when they 
are lifted up in warning, when they grasp the 
engines of warfare, when they are laid in gen- 
tleness on the brow of the ill, when they sweep 
the lyre, — they expound the man within the 
man. The tongue is simply the soul articu- 
late. When the lips whiten, we know the 
soul is angry. When the body is shaken by 
sensual passion, it is telling a tale which the 
man within would fain conceal. The soul 
runs out to the finger-tips. It is even mani- 
fested in the hair in moments of extreme fear. 
But when, at last, the soul leaves the body, the 
body's work is done. It no longer reports its 
master ; for its master has released it from 
duty. 

Our teachers are all about us. We awake 



A Man Within a Man. 11 

in the school-room of the world, and, from the 
first cry of infancy to the final breath of age, 
we are under unceasing instruction. Instantly 
our environment begins to mold and influence 
us. Myriad forces, visible and unseen, play 
about us. We are the inhabitant of two 
worlds, compassed by a mighty cloud of poten- 
cies, all interested in our welfare. Microscopic 
personalities fill the air, and we tread them be- 
neath our feet. Countless suns and earths, too 
far away to be noticed, too numerous to be con- 
ceived, still fling their spell over us. Embodied 
angels bend over our cradles, and angels incor- 
poreal encamp around us. Normal everyday 
experiences sift us like wheat. Sorrows, joys, 
hindrances, mysteries, sickness, death, the tragic 
and the comic, the pathetic and the martial, 
poverty and wealth, lay their shaping fingers 
on the spirit. Everything the eyes behold, the 
hands touch, the ears hear, the tongue tastes, 
informs us. We may shun books, avoid col- 
leges, refuse every opportunity for systematic 
study, yet we can not play truant from the en- 
forced school of God. 

And while the world and society teach all — 
it is the child who teaches us most. It is still 



12 A Little Loiver than the Angels. 

true that "a little child shall lead them." 
Evolutionists tell us that prolonged infancy 
has been the greatest teacher in the highest 
things. The mother, through long years of 
care, as she rears one child after another, is 
under the most beautiful cultivation. The 
sweet, helpless, innocent things lying before 
her, or playing around her, gently draw out 
and perfect patience, pity, affection, sacrifice, 
wisdom. Through the most continual exercise, 
day and night, decade after decade, these 
qualities become so habitual that they become 
eternal. The mother passed them down the 
stream of heredity — and as the river of divin- 
ity rolled onward, it gathered force, until it 
now carries the ages with it. The children of 
the house irradiate the earth. " Their angels 
do always behold the face of my Father which 
is in heaven." Thus they bring heaven within 
the radius of the family circle. They are the 
point of contact of the race with that dear 
place whence it came, and to which it will 
return. 

On earth there will never be a higher being 
than man. In heaven there can be but one 
higher being — God. " Thou hast made him a 



A Man Within a Man. 13 

little lower than God [R. V.] and hast crowned 
him with glory and honor." To be a man 
and have no possible successor ; to be the 
blossom and fruit of the long past eternities, 
and the intimation of a rising glory that John's 
apocalypse but dimly foretells, should fill us 
with an inspiration that lightens care and ex- 
tinguishes every base desire. 

" Nor hath God deigned to show himself elsewhere 
More clearly than in human forms sublime, 
Which, since they image him, compel my love." 
— Michaelangelo. 



>~»H«" 



LIGHT POWERS. 



~»X«~ 



II. 

A SYSTEM OF LIGHT. 



The cerebrum desires to see. — John Worcester. 

We are not only creatures of emotion, but 
of light. Within ourselves no curtains are 
drawn, no darkness abides. Without light 
life would be impossible. We should be a 
chaos, orderless and purposeless. "If the 
Light that is within thee be darkness, how 
great is that darkness ! " At evening when 
we enter our homes the first thing is to light 
them up — then we kindle the fires for warmth. 
So light is first in time — though love is first 
in place. Journeying through the night, light 
must precede the footsteps to guide the way — 
yet the vital thing is the movement of the 
feet. Therefore the Light Powees precede 
the Life Powers. We must first see, dis- 
criminate, acquaint ourselves with, our inner 
and outer worlds. The gateways of our being 
2 17 



18 A Little Lower than the Angels. 

should be flung wide open, that God's light 
may stream in — and that that light may stream 
out again to illuminate our path. 

First in time, then, is that wonderful system 
of light strung within us called the brain. 
Beautiful beyond description, an ineffable mys- 
tery, with its myriad apartments one-ten- 
thousandth of an inch in diameter, with transit 
fibers of incredible fineness, with powers of 
thought limitless, and of bewildering com- 
plexity. What facile architect built the cupola 
of the brain? That remarkable instrument 
upon which the soul plays? That elevated 
tableland of stratified nervous matter, furrowed 
by deep and sinuous canons, traversed by a vast 
network of highways, along which the messen- 
gers of light pass to and fro ? That compara- 
tively new thing in the world which antece- 
dent rock, or tree, or star knew not? That 
extra piece of machinery marking us as the 
summit of creation? That largest mass of 
nerve-matter in the organic universe? The 
brute has a kind of shadow or adumbration of 
the organ — but is minus the impalpable mind, 
the player. The difference between the baby 
monkey and the baby man is this extra piece 



A System of Light. 19 

of machinery capable of endless cultivation, 
the shrine of eternal possibility. Says the 
great Swedish seer : " It is the brain and the 
interiors thereof, by which descent from the 
heavens into the world, and ascent from the 
world into the heavens, is made." It is the 
ladder of the Maximus Homo, traveled by 
angels, stretching between the tangible and the 
unseen. 

The evolution of the signal system came 
first. All things of the body " were made by 
it and without it was not anything made that 
was made." Body is the nervous radiation, 
infilled with muscle, organ, and cell. This 
system unifies and illuminates the entire physi- 
cal structure. From sandal to crown it leaves 
no apartment untouched. What is light? 
The candle, the lamp, and the electric bulb are 
but correspondences of light. Beautiful hints 
of " the light that never was on sea or land." 
Light is intelligence. " I see ! " we exclaim 
when we comprehend. The vast light that 
is breaking now on the darkened earth is 
not sunlight. It is wisdom, discovery, com- 
prehension of God and His works. " Dark 
as Egypt " is proverbial ; yet Egypt is a 



20 A Little Lower than the Angels. 

country where the sunlight is rarely absent, 
and where at night its rays, reflected from 
planet and satellite, constitute a less bright 
day. Light is knowledge. Books are instru- 
ments of light. " Thy Word is light." The 
mind is the light of the body, and the light 
of men. It is a great lamp swung in the 
forehead, — in the vestibule of being. The 
telegraph and telephone lines that thread the 
land are thoroughfares of light along which 
the mind of the nation runs. They are at first 
glance attributed to the genius of man. But 
they are a second edition of that which is 
within ourselves. One day a man gazed within 
and beheld himself strung to light, and went 
out and repeated what he saw in the land, and 
got a patent on it. He wired the earth as God 
had wired him, and claimed originating genius. 
Study thyself, O man, and arrange the universe 
after thee. Can we improve on God ? When 
the cosmos is completed and has reached the 
flower of its perfection, it can but have dimly 
copied man. 

The wires are the nerves — tiny white cords 
along which messages fly from brain to body, 
and back again from body to brain. They run 



A System of Light. 21 

to every muscle, every bone, every organ — to 
heart, and lung, and hand, and eye, and tongue, 
and feet. Even the hair and finger-nails are 
carefully wired. The whole body is laced with 
avenues of light. We are interwoven within 
and without — underneath and overhead as 
Boston never dreamed. The spinal cord is a 
fascicle of nervous threads that by and by will 
ray out into a million diverse filaments. Paris 
follows this method in gathering its wires into 
safe masonic conduits which pass through the 
heart of the city on their way out to the suburbs. 
The head is the summit of the system, and is 
named for wisdom and rule. We speak of the 
head of a house, of a corporation, of a State. 
There sits the mind, the invisible occupant, in 
instant communication with the remotest dis- 
tricts of being. If there is attrition at any 
point, adjustment is made and the trouble set- 
tled by the mind. The foot flashes up the 
intelligence that a pebble is in the shoe ; orders 
are returned to the hands to remove the shoe 
and extract the pebble. " I am hungry," cries 
the stomach, and the mind orders the feet to 
carry the stomach to the pantry, and the hands 
to supply its wants. "I am cold," says the 



22 A Little Lower than the Angels. 

body ; and the mind replies, " Go to the fire 
and get warm." The patient mind keeps the 
most careful watch over every precinct of its 
little kingdom. It not only soars to the stars, 
and over the planet, and wings its way to 
heaven, but it is omnipresent in every cell of 
its special domain. Telepathy, what is it ? Is 
it not a counterpart of the silent and soft inter- 
course of the mind with the body ? Has not 
organ, cell, and blood-vessel, foot, hand, and 
tongue, telepathic power ? What spirit is that 
darting along the innumerable ways of the body 
from the great nerve metropolis to its most 
distant places ? Is it not the soul sending out 
its heralds ? " The head is the continual govern- 
ing power ; it corresponds to unity and draws 
all things to itself." 

Through the Lord and the human spirit, then, 
the brain creates the body. It drew the first 
plan and built the edifice to fit the plan. The 
body is to the nerves what the woof is to the 
warp. And the nerve-system is but the cover- 
ing of the soul. The brain rays out like sun- 
light to the very tips of the human figure. 
And along its myriad ways hastes the soul. 
Nerve is soul draped with almost impalpable 



A System of Light. 23 

vesture, and fitting soul with artless perfection. 
The soul presses itself into the nerves, as life 
swells in the bud and causes it to defy gravita- 
tion and stand erect. As agent and laborer, 
the nervous system builds the body. A physi- 
ological plate will cast light on the problem I 
am illustrating. It will be seen that the nerve 
radiation assumes perfectly the human form. 
It penetrates to the skin and teeth and hair. 
It is impossible to put down the point of a 
cambric needle without touching it. It is a 
diaphanous veil of the spirit. It is a trans- 
parent curtain screening the holy of holies from 
profane eyes. What, then, is the physical ? 
It is spirit surcharged with matter, as the 
primrose is life interwoven with the planet. 
Death subtracts flesh, and leaves the spirit as to 
form and identity unchanged, as to quality, 
sublimated and beautified. Jesus was the same 
dear companion after the incident of the tomb 
— simply the grosser substances that legiti- 
mately belong to earth had been deducted. 
The tips of the nerves — that is, the tips of the 
spirit — form the outline of ourselves. When 
we gaze upon hands, feet, face, figure, we be- 
hold spirit thinly clad. To be sure, we see 



24 A Little Lower than the Angels. 

but the almost crystalline partition walls ; yet 
they conform perfectly to that within. The 
brain, then, and its continuation, is but the 
channel of the soul. And this is saying that 
character resides in every part of us. The 
flesh is actually an immortal formation. We 
are physically such as we will be seen to be 
when we die. Character is seen in the light of 
the eye, in the curl of the lip, in the tones of 
the voice, in the movements of the hands, in 
the swing and poise of the frame. Death sim- 
ply takes down the scaffolding and leaves the 
ethereal structure intact. 

The brain is not the mind, but the instrument 
of the mind. The brain is the mind's mode 
of action. Spirit plays on brain, and brain 
plays on body. We sit in the cupola of being 
(as the head of a railway system sits in the cen- 
tral office) and govern ourselves. The director 
is omnipresent in every part of it through 
those interlacing wires. They are but an ex- 
tension of himself. His orders flash every- 
where — and those orders are his mind, are 
himself. We are thus present in every part of 
ourselves, like the rays of the sun that com- 
municate with every blade of grass, every 



A System of Light. 25 

humble weed. The mind is the sun of our 
human system. The nerves are but lengthened 
selves. In this sense we are not flesh — flesh is 
a foreign substance, which will one day be 
eliminated, just as the mineral in petrified 
bodies does not legitimately belong to them. 
Death is the withdrawal of the material from 
the spiritual by a subtle chemistry known only 
to God and His ministering angels. 

The repeating stations or sub-offices of a tele- 
graphic system have been supposed to be some- 
thing new — an invention of this bright and 
pushing era. Lesser centers are constituted 
by the first center, like satellites of a sun, to 
which are confided special duties. This re- 
lieves the head-office of too much detail. They 
are sub-centers, and under direct surveillance, 
yet, after instructions, obtain a certain indepen- 
dence. They do detailed things without troub- 
ling the central. This supposed clever device 
of the new age is as old as humanity. It has 
been working within us for untold generations. 
The brain is the central — yet it has repeating 
stations in the cerebellum and in the spinal 
cord. All involuntary movements are wrought 
without the conscious effort of the mind. 



26 A Little Loiver than the Angels. 

There are the angels of the heart that keep it 
throbbing, the angels of the lungs that keep 
them heaving, heavenly bands detailed by the 
Lord to precious and peculiar labors. They 
are given authority over vital functions upon 
which the life is suspended by a thread, as we 
appoint certain men of the nation to positions 
of immense trust, where the existence of gov- 
ernment is poised ; as the manager of a great 
corporation sits at his desk undisturbed by 
the thousand-and-one complications about him. 
These are but a transcript of something the Lord 
set to working within us at the dawn of the 
race. We are told that heaven is in the form 
of the brain (in the form of the nervous sys- 
tem, in the form of man), with the Lord at the 
head, about which myriad centers are grouped. 
The brain represents heaven ; the nerves, rays 
of influence and control. 

Therefore the mind is the patient teacher 
and preceptor of the body. It instructs cer- 
tain departments to do its will until its will 
becomes spontaneous and natural. It persists 
in holding the body to good habits, until those 
habits become instinctive. Through these 
sub-agents the mind has constant oversight of 



A System of Light. 27 

the minutest details. She presides like a god- 
dess and loves likes a cherishing mother. The 
operators in the repeating stations are loyal to 
her as gravitation is loyal to the Almighty. 
And they arrange themselves in the mind's 
order with as much fidelity as the raindrops 
take their respective places and hues in the 
bow. We see the overwhelming importance, 
then, of having the mind lighted up with the 
lamps of God. Then that light will fling 
itself out to the remotest corners of our lives, 
shining in deeds and speech. "If the blind 
lead the blind both shall fall into the ditch." 
We should hang aloft in our foreheads the 
"light that shineth unto the perfect day," 
for " the brain, from which is the origin of 
all things in man's life, is next under the fore- 
head." As the mind is, the body will be in- 
structed — and will become. By long-suffering 
affection and most patient repetition each part 
of us should be brought to act in unison with 
the sanctified brain. We should cheer up 
each fainting power, and inspire what has a 
tendency to grovel. We are the instructors of 
the fingers. We teach them to practice the 
score until at last they are graduated, and need 



28 A Little Lower than the Angels. 

no further oversight. They do their work 
gladly without referring to us. We teach 
them not to be selfish or thieving by pressing 
them into philanthropies and kindnesses until 
they become voluntary angels of mercy. "We 
teach the tongue to articulate clearly, to utter 
sentiments of light and love, until it no longer 
wishes to sting like an adder, or to pierce the 
soul with many darts. We teach the feet to 
walk in straight paths and to climb altitudes 
of peace and purity until they no longer seek 
the valleys of sensuality, or move along the 
ways of death. This is what is meant by 
habit — the power of habit. By constant self- 
control we may stamp the new name not only 
on our foreheads, but on every part of us. We 
may thus shape the outward form, as Green- 
ough did his marble. Our bodies are actually 
the rough material given the soul to fashion as 
it will. This is what is meant by character 
being in the figure. The beauty of Buona- 
rotti's spirit is embalmed in his human forms. 
As he painted or carved the body he gave 
measure to his own highest thought and most 
impassioned deed. His creations were him- 
self glorified. The power of good habit ! We 



A System of Light. 29 

speak frequently of the power of base habit, 
but the good is as strong as the bad, and 
stronger ; the bad runs out in the " third and 
fourth generations " ; the good continues unto 
the "thousandth" — forever. Oh, the almost 
infinite possibilities of mind over matter ! 
John Worcester tells us that the cerebellum 
(or little brain) is not a thinking or voluntary- 
organ. It is but the faithful servant of the 
cerebrum. It does "what is given it from 
above." It listens to the voice out of its 
overshadowing heaven, and from that "bright 
cloud " descends into the valleys of its exis- 
tence to gladly fulfil. The organ of nature, it 
may be regenerated and made angelic by its 
preceptor. It presides over the body while it 
sleeps, and is the home of dreams. At night 
when we lie down it may be instructed to 
entertain beautiful thoughts, to transmit peace 
and trust to the remotest parts. Sensual emo- 
tions, carking cares, disturbing fancies, may be 
bidden to depart. In other words, demons 
may be shown the door, and angelic bands 
may be permitted to fill it with the "peace 
that passeth understanding." As the blood 
from the heart is purified by the lungs, the 



30 A Little Lower than the Angels. 

cerebellum may be purified by the cerebrum. 
And we all realize the regenerating power of 
high thought. We know what an effect good 
or evil news has upon us as it runs over the 
wires or drops through the mails. Just this 
power the mind has over the body. Cast away 
physic and cling to hope. Chavannes has a 
mural painting in the Boston Public Library 
illustrating this point. Along telegraphic lines 
pass two angels, one white and the other 
somber, both touching the wires with harmoni- 
ous fingers as they flash across the continent 
with their tales of weal and woe. Some re- 
mote cottage or mansion is to be exhilarated or 
depressed. Says Robert Browning : < * Measure 
your mind's height by the shade it casts." 

We see, then, what quality of thinking will 
do for the life. We may degrade the brain 
and trail its bright garments in the dust. We 
may debase it and make it the servant of a 
wicked master, and through it the utilities 
of being will take like shading. The devil 
may be discovered in feature, motion, language, 
glance. There are demons incarnate — demons 
animating fleshly temples. We are told that 
the very texture of the brain accommodates 



A System of Light 31 

itself to the quality of our thinking. " The 
mind secretes poison as the liver secretes bile." 
The dull and sodden eye of the sensualist, the 
paralyzed thought, the very collapse of the 
figure God made in His own image, tells its 
story. As the mind forms the body, the body 
must be its faithful reporter. 

" It is the mind that inaketh good or ill, 
That maketh wretch or happy, rich or poor." 
— Spenser s "Faerie Queene." 



III. 

WINDOWS OF THE SOUL. 



" The light of the body ia the eye." 

At first it is somewhat difficult to realize 
that we live in a flesh house and gaze through 
its bright windows on the world; that our 
body is the house, we the occupant, and our 
eyes the windows. But a little close thinking 
will convince us of this and dissipate any 
lingering doubts. Said Jesus : " The light 
[window] of the body is the eye." Close for 
an instant those beautiful fringed curtains and 
you will realize this, for you will be shut in 
midnight darkness so far as outer things are 
concerned. Open them, and the landscape 
spreads itself at your feet. It is the identical 
experience of closing the shutters of a dwell- 
ing and barring out the day. 

The flesh eye (or outer eye) is not a real eye ; 
it is but a lens through which the actual eye 
32 



Windoivs of the Soul 33 

gazes. We are spiritual beings wearing spec- 
tacles manufactured of the finer substances of 
the planet, through which we look on the trees, 
the hills, and the loved forms of relatives and 
friends. The soul sits inside and looks through 
the lattice. From this safe inclosure it watches 
the drama of nature and society. These cor- 
poreal glasses are, as the great poet says, " The 
eye and prospect of the soul." They are the 
" mind's eye." A study of these windows fills 
the reverent pupil with rapture, and lifts his 
thought to the divine Artisan. They are a re- 
markably constructed camera obscura, a dark- 
ened chamber magnificently fitted up with re- 
flectors and glasses for the purpose of painting 
truthful representatives of the outward creation 
on the sensitive plate of the brain. Descend 
the successive steps of the evolution of this 
organ and estimate the ages the eye has spent 
in climbing to its superb perfection. Con- 
sider the uncounted centuries employed in 
polishing its lenses and adjusting the dia- 
phragms and screws. Observe the self-acting 
spring that makes the eyelids close when the 
eye is threatened. Note the closely woven 
nervous network from which the retina has its 
3 



34 A Little Lower than the Angels. 

name, like an exquisitely organized velvet nap 
standing up on the expanded tissue of the optic 
nerve. Watch with what peculiar tenderness 
the body guards and protects this precious pos- 
session ; — the overhanging roof; the eaves- 
troughs of the brows ; the upper and nether 
elastic curtains that quickly close against dust, 
wind, or any approaching enemy ; — those drap- 
eries that lull the eyes to rest when weary, 
that temper the too intense radiance, and bathe 
and dry them at the fountain of tears. 

Have you considered the numerous aids to 
the eye of the soul ? There are eyes piled on 
eyes in prodigal profusion. We see persons 
occasionally wearing two or three pairs of 
glasses — spectacles over spectacles. And as 
if these were not enough for the eager vision, 
we buy microscopes and telescopes. These are 
all outer artificial eyes of the inner actual eye. 
The soul looks, as it were, adown a vista of 
them. Behind the multiplicity of crystalline 
aids it stands and looks through. In our de- 
vout endeavor to inspect the surrounding uni- 
verse, what expedients we devise ! To adjust 
the planet, the objects of the planet, and the 
distant planets and suns to our sight, we seize 



Windows of the Soul. 35 

every possible help. We grind glasses, we 
turn them concave and convex, we magnify or 
minify, we lengthen or shorten, — that the soul 
may see, see, see. There are resting spectacles 
for the overworked organ. There are the instru- 
ments that unveil a world beneath the feet — 
and a universe in the sky. Myriad creatures 
creep, swim, and fly that we had never fancied 
had an existence, and the interstellar spaces, 
before a cerulean blank, are set with countless 
lights. The very atmosphere is alive ; " thin 
air " is seen to contain a population that forbids 
mathematical numeration, and the atmosphere 
is now known to be a lens of great depth and 
beauty. We speak of it as clear or thick, and 
its condition is to be considered with any out- 
look over the land or into the sky. 

What are all these but eyes of the soul's 
eyes ? We have actually advanced God's 
handiwork. " Greater things than these shall 
ye do." The telescopic and microscopic eye is 
a thousand times more clear and powerful. 
We have taken great leaps in the evolution of 
vision. We have done in a few years what it 
would have taken millenniums to have reached 
by the way of evolution. Yet our conceit is 



36 A Little Lower than the Angels. 

lowered when we reflect that these aids would 
be worth so much old metal and glass without 
the windows of the face. The blind man has 
no use for our finest optical utensils. They 
are so much lumber to him. 

Then there is the photographic eye, that is 
immensely superior to anything that has been 
mentioned. It can see where the human eye, 
through the telescope, beholds a blank. It 
can gaze steadily for hours in one spot with- 
out winking or wearying. It can record with 
infinite and delicate accuracy what time can 
not efface. Here is an eye independent of the 
nervous eye — and so much better that astron- 
omers resort to it in crucial cases, discarding 
the instrument the Lord has made. 

For the skeptical here is an unanswerable 
proof of the reality of the soul. The outer 
eyes prove the inner. As the blind man has 
no use for spectacles, the flesh eye would be 
superfluous if there were no spirit eye behind 
it. Withdraw the spirit and see : the dead 
man's eye becomes " a dead letter." The fact 
that the Lord has made the eye destroys forever 
any argument against the soul. It is an optic 
of the mind. The material eye is the clothing 



Windows of the Soul. 37 

of the inner eye — the inner eye fills every part 
of it, gives it life, light, and therefore sight. 
" If the light that is within thee be darkness, 
how great is that darkness ! " As there is 
perfect adjustment of the outer eye to the sun 
and the atmosphere, there is perfect adjustment 
of the spirit eye to the flesh eye. " The sight 
of the body altogether corresponds to the 
spirit." 

What, then, is ordinary everyday seeing but 
spiritual seeing ? What is it but the soul view- 
ing the world ? What is the glance of a friend 
but heart greeting heart ; — in the light of the 
eye, soul saluting soul with an unseen em- 
brace ? What do we see but " the rapt soul 
sitting in thine eyes " ? Are we not a spiritual 
humanity — a great congregation of immortals 
wearing binoculars of flesh and blood ? Through 
these human fan-lights, these " homes of silent 
prayer," beholding one another? Love and 
intelligence flashing through the almost trans- 
parent medium, the limpid vestibule of being? 

We have supposed the eyes to be organs of 
pure light — instruments of unmixed revelation. 
Yet there is an antipodal truth here — a divine 
paradox. They are designed to hide as much 



38 A Little Lower than the Angels. 

as they reveal. They are a revelation and a 
mystery. How easy it would have been for 
the Lord to lengthen and intensify their pow- 
ers ! How easy it would have been for him to 
have made them telescopic or microscopic ! He 
might have built them to look without fatigue 
into infinite spaces, to pierce opaque substances, 
and to detect hidden essences ; to go through 
the pod and sheathing to the laws and princi- 
ples that lie within. Had he done so, it is a 
question whether we should have been wiser or 
happier. Such a sweep of light might have been 
too much for us and have brought only confusion 
and pain. The matter of a few extra degrees 
might have been light that dazzles and blinds. 
He has rather given a tempered sight, sufficient 
for present development, and has taught us how 
to augment it by artificial aids. He gives 
strength sufficient for the day. Forever and for- 
ever he will set gates ajar as fast as we are able 
to enter them. By and by he will transcend 
all artifices, strip away all shades, that we may 
" see eye to eye and know as we are known." 
No longer through " a glass darkly ; but face 
to face." 

How the eye illuminates the body ! The 



Windows of the Soul. 39 

light shining through irradiates the entire edi- 
fice, guiding and cheering every hidden worker, 
driving out every shadow. As the sun is the 
" eye of the world," as Athens was " the eye 
of Greece," the windows of the face are the 
eyes of the body. They are — 

11 the books, the arts, the academes, 
That show, contain, and nourish all the world." 

The eyes live all through the body ; they are 
the visual of every organ, every activity. 
There is not a cell, tissue, nerve, or member 
but sees. " Else how could they work in that 
underworld, in the deep mines of the flesh, 
with no safety-lamps ? " " If thine eye be 
single [clear, impartial, strong] thy whole, body 
shall be full of light." The eyes are the sun 
of the body. They are like the skylights in 
Noah's ark ; like the pilot at the ship's helm 
— the " eye of the vessel." The eye is omni- 
present in the body as the sun is in the earth. 
It is a camera that photographs the outer 
world on the sensitive plate of the brain, and 
the brain transmits it over the myriad lines of 
the nervous system to the remotest provinces. 
The body is therefore ocular — every inch and 



40 A Little Lower than the Angels. 

atom of it obtains the vision. From its 
heaven above light flashes inward and down- 
ward. 

This explains how the very hands and feet 
are luminous. How our feet fly along the 
uneven and dangerous path, having eyes. 
How they scale precipitous places and conduct 
the body safely along slippery ways. Close 
the eyes, and the feet are instantly in darkness, 
and know not what to do. This explains how 
the hands have such skill in operating on the 
world. Every finger has an eye — the whole 
hand is crowded with light. The effulgence 
from those upper windows transfigures it. 
" If thine eye be single thy whole body [hands, 
feet] shall be full of light." The eyes irra- 
diate the whole mansion of the soul, streaming 
through every window. 

How important it is, then, that we should 
keep our windows clean ! Glass needs con- 
stant brightening. We who wear spectacles 
have learned well this lesson. How easily 
they get soiled ! Old forsaken houses are 
almost dark for the dust and cobwebs that 
drape the windows. How the lenses of a 
telescope are polished ! With what immense 



Windows of the Soul 41 

care they are cast, to be free from wrinkle, 
bubble, flaw ! A slight imperfection hides a 
world. A blur spoils a sun. It is only the 
clear (single) eye that is a perfect medium of 
light — that tells us the truth about the things 
we look at. We see double, see objects turbid 
and smutty — when the eye is wrong. To 
some the world and its inhabitants are strange, 
lurid, shadowy ; like the blind man, half seeing, 
they behold men as " trees walking." How a 
simple thing like glass will mar a fine work of 
art. It will take on muddy hues, its contour 
will seem awry, and the touch of the artist will 
be obscured. The optics of the soul are pecu- 
liarly susceptible to flaw. The world of nature 
and of men takes a million varied shades and 
shapes according to the condition of the eye. 
This explains the diversity of views that ob- 
tain everywhere. Why some see a God of 
love; others, an Almighty Tyrant. Why 
some see a good and faithful world, and the 
Lord walking in the midst ; others, a jumble 
of forces and laws that work for pain, mystery, 
and destruction. Why one is soothed by the 
music of the spheres, and another is tortured 
by its discords. Go into a forsaken and bat- 



42 A Little Lower than the Angels. 

haunted dwelling, and look through windows 
hung with the webs of spiders, thick with 
dust, and obscured by decay on the most 
charming summer scene, and you will get my 
idea. Or put on spectacles dimmed and im- 
perfectly focused. 

Much depends upon the condition of the 
windows. If the thrifty housewife is so par- 
ticular, how much more should we keep the 
transparencies of the mind unsullied ! " The 
soul determined and fitted to look abroad cleans 
its windows/' Then floats in more and com- 
pleter visions than come to ordinary eyes. How 
do we do this? Keep the spirit pure, clear, 
unbiased, — that God's light may find perfect 
admittance ; that, in turn, the spirit may " see 
the King in His beauty." Purity is the single 
condition of sight. " The pure in heart shall 
see God." Sin blurs the heart vision, spoils 
the focus, and warps the whole being. It is 
a proverb that the evil eye turns beauty and 
health into a curse. " If [note the reservation] 
thine eye be single [pure] thy whole body shall 
be full of light." 

Everything hinges on the soul behind the 
eyes. Is this not equally true of glasses ? For 



Windows of the Soul. 43 

they are only avenues of spiritual vision. They 
are secondary aids — artificial helps to the hidden 
spirit. The two interwork. There must be 
perfect adjustment. Outer and inner must 
harmonize. The eye sees according to the 
temper of the mind. The eye becomes what 
the soul is. The clear, calm, pure eye — does 
it not mirror a pure heart ? And the heavy, 
ungleaming, slatternly eye — does not that repre- 
sent a soul too? These three things can be 
asserted. The outer eye is the organ of mani- 
fest truth. Truth in myriad and fascinating 
forms lies before it, yet it may not see the truth. 
What is the difficulty ? Sight is the discernment 
of truth, and it lacks sight. We may look out 
of our eyes and see nothing, or we may see an 
exactly different picture from the one before us. 
We must have Sight to see truly, even with 
eyes. And there is another step still higher — 
vision. Vision is the elevation of sight to a 
point where we see God — God in everything. 
What wide differences in men and women ! 
Some have eyes, but no sight. A gloomy in- 
habitant sits within. Some have sight, but no 
vision. They live in the region of framework 
and mathematics. They deal with patent, visi- 



44 A Little Lower than the Angels. 

ble, tangible facts, and they never pass out 
of this narrow and circumscribed field. But 
there is vision that is independent of any outer 
aid. There is an inmost eye that penetrates 
the deep places of nature, through all its cov- 
ering, to the world of mystic forces. Close 
the lids, and if you have this deeper sight, you 
will discover something. After all has been 
said, the casual eye but reveals the outer wrap- 
pings — admits only to the vestibule of the 
temple of truth. There is vision that beholds 
the essences and principles. Jesus ranged over 
the entire field — from center to rim. He saw 
Peter's body and Peter's inmost life. " God 
looketh upon the heart." It is possible to 
look through the trappings of souls to the souls 
themselves. Is there not an eye that sees 
paper and print only? This is not sight 
There is another eye that detects the thought 
lying in the sentence — the fact it attempts 
to crystallize. That is sight. But there is 
another eye still, that detects a third sense — a 
divine and rapt apocalypse lying at the very 
heart of the volume. This is Vision. One 
sees marble, curved, polished, figured, and of 
perfect whiteness. The flesh eye only falls 



Windows of the Soul. 45 

upon it. Another sees beauty, grace, sym- 
metry — a duplicate of the "human form di- 
vine." That is sight. Another sees God 
imaged there ; he sees soul beneath the marble, 
he catches the conception of the sculptor, he 
sees a language there inexhaustible in its sym- 
bolism, every limb, every feature, every atti- 
tude, crowded with divine significance, each 
detail having correspondence with the spiritual 
world. This is vision. When we look at a 
picture, a child, a flower, we may (or may not) 
see through this triple medium. We may 
be among those who "having eyes see not." 
In the legend of Jubal we are told that " all 
eyes can see when light flows out from God." 
But it is not so. If the spirit is not pure, we 
may stand in the third heaven and its very 
light will be to us as Egyptian darkness. 
" Blessed art thou Simon Barjona, for flesh and 
blood hath not revealed it unto thee, but my 
Father which is in heaven." 

Hamlet. My father ! Methinks I see my father ! 
Horatio. Where, my lord ? 
Hamlet. In my mind's eye, Horatio. 



IV. 

THE AUDITORY LAMP. 



Thy Word is a Lamp. — The Psalter. 
Look with thine ears. — Shakespeare. 

Light enters the soul through the ears as 
well as the eyes. There is the unique auditory- 
lamp that casts its soft radiance through every 
part of the fleshly mansion. An auditory 
lamp ! What is that ? It is the acoustic torch 
that enlightens the soul. It is the Aladdin 
lamp of life. It lights by sound rather than by 
sight. It illuminates even the lowest depart- 
ments of the body. How can resonance shine ? 
how can words radiate ? If we think closely, 
we will see that the results of sound and light 
are identical. The method of delivery only 
varies. Music tells us something ; so does the 
landscape. We see birds, mountains, men and 
women, rivers, and storms, and they say some- 
thing to us. They talk to us and bring mes- 
46 



The Auditory Lamp. 47 

sages. We hear orators, melody, the scream 
of the locomotive, the cry of the hawk, the 
coo of the dove, the clangor of bells, the run- 
ning brook, the breeze in the trees, the lapping 
wavelets, the thunder of the sea on the beach 
— and each sound tells its own story to the in- 
structed spirit. Through the avenues of sound 
or sight light comes. In its last analysis sound 
is light ; it is a word to the soul, informing 
and enchanting it. We deal now with light by 
hearing. Old Isaac Walton found the lovely 
cadences of earth a hint of heaven : 

"The moving leaves, the water's gentle flow, 
Delicious music hung on every bough. 
If to weak, sinful man such sounds are given, 
Oh ! what must be the melody of heaven ! ' ' 

Therefore the Lord has expended as much skill 
and patience in the building and perfection of 
the ear as the eye. The eye deals with light 
through vision ; the ear, with light through Jiear- 
ing. The ear is a remarkable instrument that re- 
ceives, collects, and interprets to the indwelling 
spirit vibrations which we recognize as intona- 
tion. It has a series of wonderful chambers 
and corridors through which every form of 
atmospheric tremulation passes to the spirit. 



48 A Little Lower than the Angels. 

We sit within, placing our souFs ear to this 
fleshly organ, as the operator holds the tele- 
phonic receiver while conversing with the dis- 
tant speaker. Its order is threefold. There is 
the concha, or shell, spread out to the air — 
convex, built to catch noises as the fisher's net 
is built to catch fish. There is the transmitting 
chain of bones, the triple sounding-board that 
throws the noises inward where the soul sits 
listening. Lastly, the three spiral avenues or 
snail-shell windings that reach the inner invis- 
ible auditory. All these are vestibules or 
guards protecting us from alien and incoherent 
voices, which, if admitted, would only confuse 
and annoy. 

The relation between the ear and the eye is 
significant. We know they both deal with 
light. The ears see. The fishes of Mam- 
moth Cave see with their ears. All the light 
they get is through sound and touch. "Do 
you see ? " we say, when we are trying to make 
some matter plain. We mean, "Do you see 
with your ears ? do you comprehend ? " Hear- 
ing is light borne on wave-sounds ; seeing is 
light borne on w&ve-sights. The eyes occasion- 
ally listen ; the ears occasionally look. Both 



The Auditory Lamp. 49 

are used interchangeably. The eyes listen to 
the thought of a book, or the conversation of 
gesture and facial expression ; the ears see a 
truth when uttered, they see beauty in melody, 
poetry, literary form. Each may act sepa- 
rately, but both work together most intelli- 
gently. Do we not hear better when we look 
at the speaker? Shut your eyes when your 
friend is talking and my point will be made. 

Note the interesting parallels. The ear deals 
with undulations of the air ; the eye, with un- 
dulations of the ether. The ear receives a 
million motley and confusing noises battling at 
its door ; assorts and marshals them in orderly 
series before introducing them to the mind. 
The eye receives a like complexity of pictures 
and goes through similar discriminating and 
selecting processes before photographing them 
on the brain for transmission to the soul. Sound 
passes through a series of transforming cham- 
bers and anterooms to the waiting spirit ; sight 
traverses a parallel way through the vestibules 
of the eye to the brain. Both are the soul's 
reporters. They are its news-gatherers and 
detectives, constantly searching the earth for 
what may be interesting and instructive, and 
4 



50 A Little Lower than the Angels. 

hastening home with their tales of wonder and 
surprise. We read with our eyes ; read the 
book, the landscape, the changing sky, the 
moving throng, the individual and expressive 
feature and gesture. We listen with our ears 
as, borne on every atmospheric billow, words, 
sentences, complex noises, break against the 
body ; as the harmonies and discords of the 
world come rolling in like a flood. These two 
newsmongers are ever busy working at the 
same time. We are frequently conscious of 
the double report ; ears and eyes rushing up at 
the same instant, insisting upon an audience. 
And finally we become so adept at taking news 
that we can receive both messages at the same 
instant. Helen Kellar employs neither of these 
eavesdroppers ; her implements of sight and 
sound are both destroyed, or rather were never 
developed. She gets light through the avenue 
of touch mostly. With fingers, nostrils, tongue, 
and skin she gathers what she can of the doings 
of this great world. Every intonation tells us 
something which we involuntarily build into a 
sentence, and pass to the soul. Every sound 
teaches a truth which is written upon the invisi- 
ble parchment of the intellect in characters that 
can never fade. 



The Auditory Lamp. 51 

There is an ear within an ear. The ear 
without is framed for transmitting the sounds 
of the earth to the ear within. It has to do 
exclusively with planetary matters. When the 
body is dead, or the ear deaf, or the hearing 
machine destroyed in some way, the soul can 
not detect a single cosmic sound. The storm 
of melody, the floods of Mendelssohn and 
Wagner, are as though they were not. There 
are intonations audible and inaudible. What 
is audible the spirit can take only with the 
acoustic instrument that links it to the world. 
The natural ear reports the planet only ; and 
when it is dead, the planet is dead. It is as 
extinct as the landscape is to the sleepers in 
the graves. Yet there is a spirit in these 
world-noises which passes to the ear within. 
It disrobes sound, as it were, of its outer cov- 
ering. The chariot is dismissed at the inner 
entrance hall and the invisible occupant be- 
comes the property of the mind. There are 
messages that are not permitted to enter the 
deep sanctuary of being. There is hearing and 
hearing. " He that hath an Ear let him hear 
what the Spirit saith." Some have not devel- 
oped this inner listening. " Having ears they 



52 A Little Lower than the Angels. 

hear not." They hear superficially. They hear 
as the brute — they get the pod and shuck of 
sound, and lose the rest. "The natural man 
perceiveth not the things of the Spirit." 
There are things spiritually discerned, and 
things only naturally discerned. There are 
things seen by the " mind's eye," seen by the 
natural eye, seen microscopically and telescopi- 
cally. 

But the ear within really catches two classes 
of sounds. It does not hear the outward sound 
as the acoustic organ does, but it gets the har- 
mony. The soul of a sound is congruous with 
its body. One is a correspondence and config- 
uration of the other. The spirit ear extracts 
the kernel from a musical strain and allows 
the mere noise to die away ; as we take the 
meat from a nut and drop the shell. It takes 
the message and dismisses the messenger. It 
can hear minus the outward ear ; not sounds 
of earth, but the voices of the spiritual uni- 
verse. Did not the shepherds hear the angelic 
choir chanting over the Judean hills ? There 
is an instrument called the audiphone that 
transmits conversation through the bones of 
the mouth to the deeper chambers of the 



The Auditory Lamp. 53 

fleshly ear. Sound climbs up some other way, 
enters by a secret passage. And in some 
incomprehensible manner the spirit hears inde- 
pendently of the earthly organ. The soul is 
somehow stripped of its outer covering and 
lies naked to the world of spirit. At dying 
beds an illustration is frequently furnished. 
Both inner and outer organs of light are at 
work at the same moment. Standing on the 
borderland, the immortal curtain swinging be- 
tween becomes gauzy, translucent, and two 
companies, two landscapes, two worlds, are 
apparent. Sometimes while a hymn is being 
sung by mundane friends the dying will catch 
up another hymn chanted by a choir invisible. 
Earth flowing in through the expiring outward 
ear ; heaven, by an invisible and subtile corridor. 
And yet it requires the spiritual auditory to 
hear anything at all — even of mundane sounds. 
Examine the dead man's implement of hear- 
ing, and you will find it as perfect as it was in 
life. The machine is, so far as we can see, 
unimpaired. Let the surgeon take his scalpel 
and he will find just what he would in life. 
The tool is intact. What is the difficulty ? The 
listener has gone away. Examine the spyglass, 



54 A Little Lower than the Angels. 

the telescope, the binocular, and you may find 
them in perfect condition ; yet they can not see 
without the supplemental eye. Withdraw the 
eye, and they are utterly worthless. What is 
the difficulty? That which really sees has 
gone ; the looker has departed. Examine the 
telephone, and you may find the whole mechan- 
ism in perfect order, adjusted finely for imme- 
diate use ; but what is it worth without the ear ? 
The inner ear is to the outer what the listener 
is to the telephone. Music is spiritual melody ; 
it is the language of heaven. When the out- 
ward ear hears only, a conglomeration of noises 
is the result. The power to hear music is a 
spiritual power. This great faculty is a heavenly 
faculty. The outward instrument is only some- 
thing that enables us to catch these cosmic 
noises, and with the inner we extract from 
them the soul of music, which is borne to the 
deep places of the heart. There is a man, a 
woman, inside able to deal with both orders of 
sounds and build the blessed results into char- 
acter. The ear is the auditorium where the 
soul sits to listen. We are the auditor ; and 
the Lord, man, nature, the speakers. It is 
needless to argue this matter ; we feel it. We 



The Auditory Lamp. 55 

perceive it by intuition. It is not a thing of 
logic ; it is self-demonstrative. We are a liv- 
ing, acting illustration. Before one who requires 
demonstration we stand as helpless as though 
he demanded evidence of his existence. The 
evidence is himself; that he exists replies irre- 
futably. If he can not perceive it, if it is not 
a fact so clear that he can not question, argu- 
ment is unavailing. 

There is a shade of likeness between the 
ear and the eye that has not been hinted at. 
The ear stands for obedience, as well as intelli- 
gence. The optic nerves run to the cerebrum 
only ; the auditory nerves to both cerebrum 
and cerebellum. The eyes are ministers to 
intelligence primarily ; the ears to obedience 
through intelligence. Sounds are moving in 
their nature ; they are stored with impulse. 
The oration, the alarm bell, the trumpet of 
war, the scream of the locomotive, the pathos 
and stimulant of melody, the cry of pain, and 
the shout of triumph, — stir to action. Here 
is light that makes for performance. Deed 
and knowledge accompany one another. " By 
hearing is signified perception and obedience. " 
In the greater man the angels of the auditory 



56 A Little Lower than the Angels. 

are distinctly compliant. They love to do. 
Every idea carries with it the feeling that it 
must be completed by action. Sound trav- 
erses quickly the domain of mind and enters 
the open gates of the will. The object and 
aim of learning is action. One is unintelli- 
gible without the other. In the Word hear- 
ing and doing are usually in couplets. " What 
God hath joined together let no man put 
asunder." 

The ear has remarkable powers of discrimi- 
nation and selection. Great masses of sound 
come rolling up to it in conglomerate and 
seemingly hopeless confusion. A wilderness 
of noises as to form, pitch, and quality battle 
at the doors of the little auditorium. They all 
want to enter at the same instant. Promenad- 
ing the streets of the populous and busy city, 
talking with a friend on the deeper things of 
life ; or sitting in the railway-car as it rushes 
madly along accompanied with a thousand 
commingled dins and bangs, this fact comes to 
mind. The chatter of voices, the clatter of 
steel on steel, the clangor of bells, the slamming 
of doors, the shout of information, the shrill 
cry of the newsboy, a hundred intonations 



The Auditory Lamp. 57 

commingled and blended and blurred, each 
have their story to tell. The power to choose 
what to hear, to which to give audience, to 
close against what is alien to the moment, to 
concentrate on a single sound or series of 
sounds, is not tabulated among the miraculous 
because the process is so ordinary. No de- 
scription can realize the grandeur and unut- 
terable play on the outer and inner world of 
this acoustic organ. No humanly constructed 
instrument of sound can bear any comparison 
with it. Each minute or loud intonation must 
run the gauntlet in its attempt to reach the soul. 
There is a succession of windows at which 
sounds tap for admittance, yet few of them 
succeed in entering. There are numerous 
doors, at each of which the magic password 
must be whispered. Every corridor is senti- 
neled with faithful guards. As the pulsations 
advance successively toward the interior cham- 
bers, each is challenged, and the elect only are 
permitted to go in. The vast, pressing con- 
gregation of applicants is examined and dis- 
posed. The soul receives its preferred sub- 
jects like a queen. At each vestibule great 
numbers are turned away. Like the Holy 



58 A Little Lower than the Angels. 

House at Jerusalem, the ear has its inadmissi- 
ble courts. The temple was composed of 
porticos, cloisters, and enclosures running in- 
ward to the most Holy Place, before each of 
which stood discretionary guards. There was 
the great court of the Gentiles, open to all. 
The next court excluded the Gentiles ; the 
next, the women ; the next admitted only male 
Hebrews ; the next, only priests. There was 
the Holy Place, into which the chosen offici- 
ating priest might go alone ; and then the 
Holy of Holies, sacred to the feet of the soli- 
tary High Priest. In like manner the voices 
of the world find their way to the inner sanc- 
tuary, where the spirit sits waiting to receive 
its guests. Only the few choice pulsations 
applicable to the instant are permitted to enter. 
Jesus had in mind this power of option 
when he said, "Take heed what ye hear." 
He put man on his guard, and made him a 
responsible agent. We are to be careful what 
we admit to our hearts and minds. Only 
elect and noble thoughts should be introduced 
to the deep within. By an act of the will we 
may determine what we will hear. Profanity, 
obscenity, irrelevancy, the babel of superficial 



The Auditory Lamp. 59 

intonations, may assail us and press into the 
outer chamber of the auditory ; but just there 
the discriminating process ought to begin. 
That it is possible is proved every day by 
positive acts. We are constantly " taking 
heed what we hear." In the drawing-room 
we may concentrate on the group of con- 
versationalists to which we belong. In the 
place of business or toil we may shut out 
every base insinuation or allurement. We 
may sift or strain out all but the angelic. We 
may permit only pure sounds to enter our 
deeper self, the withdrawn sacred inclosures of 
the heart. " My sheep know my voice." If 
we are the Lord's, every voice that reaches 
the soul will be divine. "He that hath an 
ear let him hear what the Spieit saith." Let 
him not hear what is not of the Spirit. The 
Lord has shut us within the holy place of 
ourselves and guarded us from profane things 
by a series of winnowing vestibules, that we 
may hear only what is good. Like Bunyan's 
Pilgrim, with our fingers in our ears to shut 
out anything discordant or irrelevant, we should 
run toward the holy city, crying, " Life, life, 
eternal life." 



60 A Little Lower than the Angels. 

The ears, as well as the eyes, are in every 
part of the body. EzekiePs living creature 
was not only equipped with wings and feet, it 
was " full of eyes." The man the Lord has 
created in his image is full of ears. The 
entire body is auricular. Every organ, every 
limb, every atom, hears. Sound flashes its 
light to every corner of the carnal mansion. 
The auditory lamp beams through every win- 
dow. It even reaches the feet : " Thy word 
is a lamp unto my feet." My hands and feet 
listen — hear, and every sound arouses them 
to some duty. Every sentence is a call. The 
feet know when the bell rings. The hands 
answer sentences of gratulation with a warm 
pressure. The lips become articulate when 
high and stirring words are uttered. The 
whole body springs up at the call of danger. 
Every nerve and muscle seems to catch the 
word. The eye flashes a response. In fright 
the very hairs of the head arise and listen. 
The body is but a greater acoustic organ spread 
out to the universe in the attitude of hearing. 
And this means that it should become an organ 
of obedience. The Word of the Lord should 
be set within us a " burning and shining light," 



The Auditory Lamp. 61 

a fire that never dies away on the altar of 
being, — "a lamp unto our feet, and a light 
unto our path." 



V. 

THE TREE OF KNOWLEDGE. 



There is a spirit [breath] in man and the inspiration of the 
Almighty giveth them understanding. — Job. 

The spirit [breath] of man is the candle [light] of the Lord. 
— Solomon. 

There is a beautiful and sympathetic rela- 
tionship between the inbreathing organs of 
man and the verdure. We are a little world 
— a gathering-up of the things of the world 
within the parenthesis of our bodies. If we 
search earnestly through its avenues and 
thickets, we shall find spheres, expanses, fly- 
ing clouds, fixed rocks, loose soil, verdure, 
light, darkness, and air. When we study the 
world, we study ourselves ; and when we study 
ourselves, we study the world. 

The organs of inspiration, named the lungs, 

are like a tree springing up within. Through 

them the aerial food is communicated to the 

body. They imbibe the sweet and tonic influ- 

62 



The Tree of Knowledge. 63 

ence of the atmospheres and send it by the 
tiny blood-messengers throughout the carnal 
domain. The crimson and white corpuscles 
are minute rafts of light and air, drawn from 
the upper and outer spaces, floated upon the 
bosom of the mystic river to the remotest 
districts of the fleshly land. 

What are the trees ? They are the lungs of 
the world. They tower up like giant inbreath- 
ing instruments feeling for the riches of the 
sky. The parks of London are called the 
" lungs of London." They are that through 
which the city breathes — that through which 
it draws its therapeutics. Taking London as 
a greater man, the parks are his very breath. 
Trees strike their roots deep into the soil that 
they may stand and lift themselves as high and 
broad as possible into the heavens. They en- 
deavor to expose as much breathing surface to 
the air as will be consistent with stability. 
They run up and out almost infinitely. Why ? 
For no other purpose than to catch the breezes. 
The tree is designed by unseen fingers to float 
as many banners as possible. It begins with 
a single, unshakable trunk, divides into main 
branches, into particular ones, into numerous 



64 A Little Lower than the Angels. 

dilating twigs, at last covering itself with a 
garment woven of uncounted emerald films 
called leaves or foliage. This is the tree's 
method of courting the air, of creating a vast 
absorbing surface. For these beautifully con- 
structed streamers have both an under and an 
upper inhaling surface. The surface foliage 
should be doubled after measurement. They 
are air-takers. Their sole business is to draw 
on the reservoirs of life that hover above 
them. They feed on liquid planet, for the 
air is but the planet in solution. They woo 
and court the volatile sea in which they float 
and sway like seaweeds in the ocean. They 
are, in short, light-gatherers. The sap, or 
blood of the tree, is thrown through the capil- 
laries of the leaves in a fine spray ; and at the 
instant when it is mist, it gathers its quota of 
living breath. As it passes through the leaf it 
is elaborated, and descends for the sustenance 
of the tree. Here is a giant lung, a mighty 
instrument of inspiration. The foliage of the 
oak is frequently called " the lungs of the 
oak." 

The tree of the body is a duplicate of the 
tree of the earth. There is the " root of the 



The Tree of Knowledge. 65 

lungs/' the trunk out of which spring the 
branches and twigs of the bronchia, completing 
themselves in the six hundred million air-cells 
of the living foliage. This tree erects itself 
into the air and is continually bathed in it. 
Billows of it, at every inbreath, surge about 
these wonderful feelers. The sap (blood) of 
the body is thrown through them in the finest 
spray by the force-pump of the heart. Through 
the network of veins that thread each pink 
film that mystic fluid the Word of God calls 
the life gets aeration. They feel after light 
as the fish seeks water. Instead of rearing 
themselves outside of the body, as the tree 
roots itself on the surface of the earth, they 
stand in a great inner depository of light. 

Therefore the lungs are an organ of light. 
Is not this assertion a little strained? Can it 
stand the test of thorough scientific investiga- 
tion ? Undoubtedly the breathing organs must 
be catalogued among the light powers of the 
body. We have spoken of other methods by 
which we get light. Light by transmission 
(nervous system) ; light by vision (eyes) ; light 
by sound (hearing) ; — and now light by inspira- 
tion (breathing). 
5 



6Q A Little Lower than the Angels. 

Patiently trace the evolution of the word 
lung from its long descent through the wind- 
ing, changing avenues of speech, and you will 
at last find its root, buried in the Sanskrit, 
meaning light. Lungs, levity, light, are all 
from the same radical source. The Word of 
God never speaks of the lungs by that name — 
but always as spirit or breath. We are told 
that the " spirit [lungs] of man is the Candle 
[light] of the Lord." The lungs are fre- 
quently called the " lights." They lift them- 
selves into the light, and their business is to 
collect light. They open to the light the entire 
body, there being no corner or apartment of 
the fleshly mansion to which pulmonic respira- 
tion does not penetrate. They are the moun- 
tains of light reared within us. " Clouds of 
winged blood, momentaneous crimson flocks 
and flights, rest on their airy summits." With 
every inspiration the precious fluid is raised 
(within us) into the atmosphere and suspended 
for an instant to receive its baptism of glory. 
The blue and turbid current is transfigured into 
arterial crimson, returning to the heart lighter 
— minus its weight of poison. With every in- 
breath the lungs raise the body in all dimen- 



The Tree of Knowledge. 67 

sions ; and were it not for the attraction of the 
earth, and the pressure of the atmospheres, 
they would lift it into their own buoyant ele- 
ment — the air. They weigh the body con- 
tinually in their balances — every organ, every 
atom, every tissue. 

Light is now collected by a new and un men- 
tioned method. Not by wire, nor sight, nor 
sound, but by influence, inspiration, inbreath- 
ing, perception, intuition. By this method the 
whole botanical universe lives. And as we are 
botanical, as well as geological, and animal, we 
have this intuitive absorbent faculty. We get 
light by inhalation. Inspiration is builded of 
two Latin words, in and spirit — in-spirit ; that 
is, to take in the spirit. Pnewma, the Greek 
word for wind or air, is also the word for 
spirit. By inbreathing we inhale the spirit of 
God (truth, light). " God is light." " I am 
the truth." " Suddenly there came a sound 
from heaven like a rushing mighty wind and 
filled the whole house where they were sit- 
ting." " And they were all filled with the Holy 
Spirit" (pieuma, "air"). Inspiration is an 
extreme elevation of the mind — a perception or 
absorption of the spirit of God. " All scrip- 



68 A Little Lower than the Angels. 

ture is given by inspiration." The rapt proph- 
ets of old were inspired — that is, they in- 
breathed the spirit (air) of God, and outbreathed 
it in holy writings. Inspiration appeals to the 
mind: "The brain and the lungs conspire 
together in every state of thinking." " The in- 
spiration of the Almighty giveth them Under- 
standing." When the lungs cease to heave, 
the brain lies comatose. In suffocation and 
swoons the heart acts tacitly, respiration is 
abolished for the time. "Every state of 
thinking produces a distinct and concordant 
state of breathing." 

The breathing organs are the ventilating 
and house-cleaning department of the human 
establishment. They remove the dust and 
accumulated rubbish caused by the attrition of 
living. The human machinery wears slightly, 
and the gum and grime need to be cleansed 
away. The grind of muscle on muscle leaves 
a sediment. The mill of being makes some 
litter. The lungs are windows through which 
the fresh air blows, sweetening and purifying 
the whole body. The inhalation of truth, the 
taking of the breath of heaven, ventilates the 
mind. It is the lavatory where thinking takes 



The Tree of Knoivledge. 69 

its ablutions. Through these wide-flung shutters 
the breath of the Most High conies upon us like 
the rushing winds of Pentecost. " He breathed 
on them and saith unto them Receive ye the 
Holy Spirit [breath] ." How the mere open- 
ing of a window will lift a cloud from the 
brain ! How a little breeze of truth will clear 
our ideas ! 

This aerial food is the most vital thing of 
life. Infinitely more so than the grosser foods. 
We may live days without the one, but breath- 
ing must occur as regularly as the pulses. This 
invisible, intangible pabulum that enspheres us, 
this mystic element we can not grasp, this " thin 
air," this something undefinable, inexplicable, 
in which everything is bathed, is the most par- 
amount of material substances. Why ? Because 
it has a soul — an air within an air ; it is impreg- 
nated with the ethers of the spiritual world. 
Without it the verdure withers, life ceases, 
man becomes extinct. 

The body is aflame and requires oxygen to 
fan its fires. At Niagara Falls, where they 
are making great quantities of electricity, the 
manager was asked, " What is electricity ? " 
The reply was : " We are making it, and sell- 



70 A Little Lower than the Angels. 

ing it as an article of commerce ; but we have 
never seen it, nor do we know what it is." 
" We know its results are power, heat, and 
light." "We know its ways, its manifesta- 
tions — but not itself." Air is as undecipherable 
as electricity. It is the most abundant, com- 
monest article of living ; it touches us, with its 
tonic fingers, without and within ; it is the 
general bath, the food and drink, the native ele- 
ment of the pauper and the prince, the serpent 
and the eagle — yet it is occult and beyond our 
depth. We know its ways — we know flame 
burns in it, blood requires it, the creation 
craves it, as the thirsty desert traveler craves 
the cooling spring. We know that everything 
that has life expires without it ; that it recruits 
the blood and raises it to arterial splendor and 
richness ; that it is the vehicle and menstruum 
of physical being. 

The breathing organs are the gymnasia of 
the body. As the wind exercises the trees, the 
lungs are swayed by this insweeping air, exer- 
cising the whole body. Trees die in a still, 
stagnant medium. When the currents of the 
liquid sea in which we dwell are sluggish, 
our houses are stuffy, we feel like fishes in a 



The Tree of Knowledge. 71 

too quiescent pond. Movement is a necessity 
of health. The higher and finer things be- 
come, the more mobile they become. Exercise 
quickens the heart-beat, sets the lungs to heav- 
ing faster, hurls greater quantities of blood 
through the air-films, carrying ozone to the 
tips of the body, with a result at once tonic 
and life-giving. The more exercise, the more 
light. The better we live, the more abundant 
inflow of truth, the stancher and stronger the 
entire moral system. Action is clarifying, 
energizing. The soul is regaled when the 
winds of truth blow through all its recesses, 
— blowing out the false, blowing in the true. 
"All religion relates to life, and the life of 
religion is to do good." " Light is sown for the 
righteous," — those who ultimate their lives in 
right deeds. 

Inspiration is for respiration. The end and 
aim of inbreathing is outbreathing. Outbreak- 
ing (expiration) is the fruit and use of inspira- 
tion. We die that we may live. Great breathers 
are great workers. The bellows that blow the 
harp of life must be capacious if that harp is 
to make grand melody. The lungs not only 
supply a due quantity of air to the interior 



72 A Little Lower than the Angels. 

parts of the body, but swell and sweeten every 
tissue, even to the feet. They are the bellows 
and keys of the human harp, of which the will 
is the executing fingers. The inbreath returns 
on its bosom song and speech. The tongue 
is a fabric of the atmosphere ; the outward 
temple of wisdom is built of this volatile yet 
essential substance. The lungs breathe over 
the larynx, the tongue, the palate, the teeth, 
and the lips. They awaken the wind and 
stringed instruments of the fleshly orchestra, 
— the laryngeal harp, the tracheal pipes and 
strings, the soundboard of the cranium, the 
articulating hammer of the tongue, the fine 
play of the mouth and the lips. Air is trans- 
posed into articulate sound ; it becomes the 
chariot and vehicle of thought. This is why 
God has given us breath. A man whose ex- 
piration is empty, blown into vacant space, is 
not in the divine image. " Cease ye from 
man whose breath is in his nostrils." Said 
Jesus, " I am the Light of the World." Ye are 
the light of the world. We are to shine on 
men as He did, in our ratio. We are to breathe 
on men as He did, in our ratio, saying, " Re- 
ceive ye the Holy Spirit." 



The Tree of Knowledge. 73 

The act of inspiration is a beautiful and 
significant exchange. We breathe in life, 
breathe out death. It is living and dying at 
every respiration. It is regeneration by inha- 
lation. At each heaving of the bellows the 
blood is invited to give up its impure gases, 
which are passed outward to the air. As it 
mounts to the summits of the lungs it looks 
up, to enable it to yield the baser things of its 
nature. It flows in laden with death — flows 
back refined and clarified. It is a beautiful 
symbol of the lower loves of the will cleansed by 
the inbreathed truth. The blood-river of the 
entire man is poured through the filtering pul- 
monary vessels. When these tiny, branching 
pipes reach the films of the lungs, they greet 
each other with this ineffable interchange. The 
blood gives up its bad and takes the good ; the 
air yields its precious substance and carries the 
refuse of the blood into the open — something as 
we carry our torn and filthy bills to the treasury, 
and receive new ones in their place. How the 
enriched fluid dances and glows with its new- 
found joy ! How it hastens over the body, 
pressing, tapping at every door of every organ 
and gland, asking for an opportunity to do 



74 A Little Lower than the Angels. 

good ! So it is when the mind is inspired by 
truth. We desire nothing so much as to bless 
others. " In thy presence is fullness of joy ; 
at thy right hand are pleasures forevermore." 
We are given "beauty for ashes, the oil of 
joy for mourning, the garment of praise for 
the spirit of heaviness." 

There is a right and a wrong breathing. 
There is always an opposite. Every pole has 
its antipodes. Every east has a west ; every 
south a north ; every mountain has its vale ; 
every plateau its everglade. There are poi- 
sonous airs, death-dealing atmospheres. There 
is a breathing which carries impurities over the 
system. There is a breathing that depletes the 
blood and impoverishes it. There are some 
who court the false, as the leaves seek the light. 
They " love darkness rather than light." They 
delight in mischief, absorb scandal, and are at 
home in the lurid airs of lust. " What a 
man's mind loves his blood craves," because 
the outward is but a configuration of the in- 
ward; because the inward crystallizes and 
builds the outward, and is the soul and impulse 
of every atom of it. The body, clothing, 
surroundings, speech, and gesture can be but a 



The Tree of Knowledge. 75 

radiation of the individual indwelling spirit. 
So much depends, then, upon a pure inspira- 
tion. What the breath is, the man is. 

There is a twofold breath — one of the spirit, 
another of the body. Yet they are really 
one j for the body is but the fabric of the 
spirit. It is dual also in its quality ; yet one 
must accord with the other. Both are either 
good or vicious. We can not have a pure 
inner breath and an impure outer breath. 
Sweet waters can not spring from a bitter foun- 
tain. Paul journeyed to Damascus " breathing 
out threatening and slaughter against the dis- 
ciples of the Lord Jesus " ; he breathed out 
what was in him. But when he had inspired 
the noontide splendor of God, and heard the 
voice of the Lord breathing out of the glory, 
he got a new inspiration. Henceforth he 
breathed out light and love. Much depends 
upon how, and what, we breathe. Physiolo- 
gists are waking up to this pregnant idea. Deep 
breathing, pure breathing, ventilation, life in 
the open air, are the pressing, timely, sanitary 
topics. And if this is true of the body, what 
of the soul ? what of the breath of the spirit ? 

"Bring with thee airs from heaven or blasts from 
hell?" 



VI. 

THE SEAMLESS DRESS. 



Thou coverest thyself with light as with a garment. — Psalter. 

Man, an epitome of the universe, holding 
within the parenthesis of his body heaven, the 
world, and all that is earthly, is beautifully 
sealed and stamped with the signature of the 
Almighty. He lies within a transparent envel- 
ope, open to the influences of the without. 
Through its viewless alleys his spirit shines, as 
the clothing of Jesus was lighted on the moun- 
tain, as the skin of Moses' face became trans- 
lucent after his interview with God on Sinai. 
This ineffable tunic, woven by the Lord's own 
hand, is presented to every one of us. To pic- 
ture its marvelous structure, its delicate color- 
ing, its perfect adaptation to the inequalities of 
the body, its immense diversity of composition, 
the living fabric, the garment that feels and 
knows, — would call for the pen of an angel. 
76 



The Seamless Dress. 77 

It is strong, elastic, soft, dewy, dazzling as the 
finest silk, fair as the garment of the flowers. 
" If God so clothe the lilies, how much more 
shall he clothe you ? " This priceless vesture 
is woven double, within and without. Without, 
an armor of light, constructed of millions of 
overlapping filaments. These we shed as the 
trees drop their leaves in autumn, as the 
flowers drop their lobes ; and, like these, are 
continually renewed. Within, the web is of 
finer texture, and through it flows, in countless 
streams, the scarlet life. Under the micro- 
scope it becomes infinitely more varied and 
fascinating. It is threaded with minute fur- 
rows, ridges, channels ; dotted with spirals, pro- 
montories, innumerable active craters, spread- 
ing lakes, and running brooks. It is adorned 
here and there by a remarkable extension of 
the armor, called hair. This is only elongated 
leaves, more highly colored. It flows from the 
head and face like threads of silk ; it fringes 
the eyes, overhangs the brows. 

What are the uses of this living drapery ? 
It makes the body beautiful. No creation of 
ancient or modern looms is so delicate, so 
enchanting, so graceful, and of such perfect 



78 A Little Lower than the Angels. 

proportion. It serves as an armor to protect 
the underlying nerves, blood-vessels, and minute 
organs. It is the anatomical parenthesis of the 
soul. It is an immense breathing and nutri- 
tive organ. It is the most direct avenue to the 
blood river. Yet its highest function is its 
sense of touch. It is a tunic of light — the 
great "general sense" through which we ac- 
quaint ourselves with the ensphering universe. 
It is a sealed envelope, shutting us entirely 
from the without ; and whatever we know of 
the external passes through it as beams of light 
pass through glass. It is the arch of communi- 
cation between the air, the sky, and the world 
in general ; between the circumambient crea- 
tion and the corporeal world which it bounds. 
It is a myriad-avenued mantle, through which 
the ethers pass as a new element, traversing 
the ways that find the blood and nerves. 

Let us consider it as a habiliment of light. 
Here it becomes wonderfully interesting. It 
is an all-encompassing organ of inquiry, busy 
continually collecting news of every conceiv- 
able variety. It touches the outside world as 
the brook touches the bed over which it flows. 
It is most perfectly adapted to its environment. 



The Seamless Dress. 79 

Through it light passes both ways — from the 
spirit within, outward ; from the world with- 
out, inward. It is dotted with hills of light, 
called papillae. They are called "tactile" 
papillae — that is, papillae of touch. These are 
the fingers of the flesh. They are microscopic 
hands stretched out to feel the world, and tell 
the soul within. They cover the body with 
light as with a garment. These papillae are 
finer than needle-points ; and, what is more 
remarkable, each of them is a bundle of still 
finer papillae. Some of them are looped at the 
ends, like silk caught up ; others are as though 
the ends had been cut, leaving them like minute 
velvet brushes. They are exquisitely keen 
and sensitive — all alert for information ; their 
occupation is to feel for facts and report to the 
cerebrum. Thus the entire body is turned out- 
ward to the world to receive impressions. 
These little fingers of light determine as to 
size, form, number, configuration, weight, tem- 
perature, hardness, softness, etc. Little could 
be known if the nerves were dead. If the 
robe of sense were absent, there could be no 
such thing as touch — and we should be shut 
up to the special senses. 



80 A Little Lower than the Angels. 

The fleshly apparel is truly named the " gen- 
eral sense." The other senses are properly 
called " special." The faculty of touch covers 
and embraces every other faculty. It is actually 
the human form sentient. It does everything 
but what is especially delegated to the olfac- 
tory, the visual, the auditory, the gustatory, 
and the respiratory powers. And it is, to 
some extent, a co-worker with these — for the 
skin incloses every organ of the body. It is 
the instrument of feeling, and in that sense is 
related to the heart. We speak of the heart as 
that within us which feels, melts, moves, loves. 
So this general sense is a kind of outside heart. 
There is the warm contact of hand with hand, 
of lips with lips, of body with body. " Our 
spirits rushed together at the touching of the 
lips." We touch, and are touched, according to 
the relation of heart to heart. 

There are spots where the garment is thinner, 
where the light shines through brightest. There 
are oriels and embrasures where the glory 
is more apparent. In cathedral windows 
there are places where the beauty is more crys- 
talline. The thickness of the skin varies from 
an eighth of a line to a line and a half. In 



The Seamless Dress. 81 

some localities the papillae are more elevated 
and numerous. This is especially true at the 
tips of the fingers and at the tip of the tongue. 
An illustration may be had by shutting the 
eyes and pressing some object to the back. It 
would be almost impossible to detect its nature. 
Now, keeping the eyes closed, handle with the 
fingers, and light will suddenly break on it. 

Let us consider more definitely how this 
living vestment accommodates itself to the 
world ; how these myriad tiny nerve-hills be- 
come our instructors. Miss Helen Kellar, the 
remarkable sightless and soundless girl, is a 
vivid example, for she obtains her intelligence 
of the world entirely through the skin. She 
sees nothing, hears nothing, but is exquisitely 
attuned to the outward in her potency of 
touch. She listens through the ends of her 
fingers. She reads by running them over 
raised type, talks through them by playing 
upon her typewriter. She places her hands 
upon your lips and throat while you speak, and 
thus hears you. They are her decalogue of ears. 
She hears through the palm of her hand while 
her teacher writes the finger-alphabet there. 
In a recent communication she says, " I felt 



82 A Little Lower than the Angels. 

something fall heavily," instead, as we would 
say, " I heard something fall heavily." She 
felt the roar of Niagara by placing her hands 
on soft pillows. She says, " I felt a strange, 
awful sound, like heavy iron being thrown 
down." Where we say hear y she says felt 
She hears through the medium of physical 
contact. She sees by the same general sense. 
She says, " I felt the bright sunshine of our 
beautiful world." Doubtless something as a 
plant feels it. She " felt intense light quiver- 
ing about her." She felt even the " light of 
the stars." She says, " I felt a sound of light, 
swift footsteps about my bed." Ears and eyes 
are as oblivion, yet she hears and sees through 
the palm, the finger-tips, the lips, the feet, — 
the meeting of her body with the universe. 
That animated dress of hers, quivering with 
life, so keenly alert that a zephyr can not 
approach it without betraying its advent, — is 
her sole avenue of intelligence. Without it, 
the sunshine, the air, the trees and flowers, the 
animals, the solid ground, the clasp of friend- 
ship, the messages of books and papers, — would 
be to her an unknown thing. 

Touch is more than hearing, more than see- 



The Seamless Dress. 83 

ing, more than the intensest thought and fancy. 
It is these ultimated ; it means intimacy and 
power. Both are understood by the grip of the 
hands. It means love, and the communication 
of love. The warmer and firmer the grasp, 
the deeper the emotion that lies within. How 
the face lights as the pressure is returned, in- 
timating that the hands of the heart, too, have 
met ! To touch is to feel ; and all feeling, 
from the innermost place to the ends of the 
fingers, is expressed by it. Touch, in the 
language of the spirit, means to be moved to 
love and action. We are "touched to tears" ; 
"touched" when the heart is reached, and the 
real man or woman awakened. Nothing merely 
mental will do this, nothing coldly perfect 
and beautiful, nothing simply philosophical or 
logical, nothing only grand or immovable. 
They stir admiration, wonder, — but never love. 
Touch is that powerful and mystic sense that 
finds the heart and core of being. 

Therefore its immense importance ! The 
cuticle is the beginning of man, as the leaves 
are the beginning of the tree. From the Lord, 
through ultimates, to things interior, and higher. 
The sap of the tree ascends (through the pith 



84 A Little Lower than the Angels. 

and bark) to the leaves, bathes itself in the 
light of God, gets its quota from celestial spaces, 
and descends to weave the woody fiber of the 
bole. It is the contact of the tree with the out- 
ward and upward universe that lends it sub- 
stance and power. It is this that makes the Leb- 
anon cedar unshakable as the rock. A similar 
process goes on within us. The bodily cover- 
ing is the beginning of the arterial system. 
The sap of the body (the blood) ascends to the 
leaves of the lungs and the skin, returning, 
with a higher power, to build the human habi- 
tation ; as Solomon got his stones and cedars in 
the mountains of the Holy Land to rear the Holy 
House. Power to build bone, and muscle, and 
sinew, and brain, and heart is from the high 
places. In this manner the earth, the Word, 
and the heaven of angels became a reality. 
From the Lord outward into the suns and 
planets; through evolution, from the grass to 
the forests ; from the univalve to man ; — 
through man, heaven. From the Lord into 
the literal Word ; then within the sentences, 
as jewels in a case, the fathomless arcana that 
instruct angels. From the Lord, through the 
brain, to the seamless dress of the soul — then 



The Seamless Dress. 85 

the whole inward man. Without this, whence 
every interior faculty ? Try to think ! With- 
out it, what would sight, hearing, and smell- 
ing be? If we could not touch, everything 
that lies within the radius of sight or hearing 
only would take on the far-away and the mys- 
tical. It would seem the " baseless fabric of 
a dream." It would be unreal, unsubstantial, 
if intangible ; evanescent and shadowy as our 
Lord before His disciples handled Him ; as 
our departed ones, whom we feel only with the 
soul. "Oh, for the touch of a vanished hand !" 
This is why a certain unreality will surround 
them until by and by we place our hands in 
theirs, and impress the old kiss on their faces. 
The cuticle has some importance as a respira- 
tory and nutritive organ. It exhales waste ; 
shows to the doors of being impure and no 
longer useful substances ; inspires pure ethers, 
heavenly medicants. It is a kind of outer 
lung and stomach. If it were hermetically 
sealed, the victim would expire almost as 
quickly as if asphyxiated. The nutritive 
properties of the air pass through the skin by 
a cross-cut to the blood. In cases where the 
stomach refuses to act, the body is bathed in 



86 A Little Lower than the Angels. 

liquid food, that the hungry and crying blood 
may feed. In times of awful thirst at sea, 
where fresh water is absent, the body has been 
immersed in salt water, and the skin, acting as 
a filter and sweetener, has conducted the needed 
drink to the system. 

Above the organ of touch lies the mystery 
of spheres. Spheres surround the flesh like a 
halo — as the earth is wrapped in a drapery of 
invisible atmospheres. We feel this aureole ; 
but see it not. We feel the air ; yet it is in- 
corporeal. There is what we call personality. 
Some have the sphere of a block of ice; 
others, of an irradiating and warming sun. 
The sphere is the most subtile influence that 
reaches us by any threaded way. A beautiful 
border of light lies above the cuticle as the 
sunshine hovers over the soil. It is a still 
finer hand outstretched to the world, an ear 
more sensitively strung to mundane realities. 
It is the impalpable sentinel that guards all the 
entrances of life. At its call the armor of 
light opens or closes. How some presences 
cause us to recoil, to become rigid, inhospitable, 
— to swing in the gates of being and push the 
bolt ! And we do not know why. Frequently 



The Seamless Dress. 87 

nothing has been said, we have not been 
touched. At other times how we spread wide 
every avenue of welcome ! How we extend 
the soul's hands and say, " Come ! " Instantly 
this decision is made from a favorable or an 
unpropitious report of this aureole of being. 

No part of us is so capable of cultivation as 
the " general sense." Sightless and deaf- 
mutes frequently get more out of the world 
than others with every faculty normal. They 
get more through their skin than others do 
through all-seeing eyes and all-hearing ears. 
There are instances of the blind being able to 
detect even color by the touch. They fre- 
quently know the denomination of bank-bills. 
Bank-tellers handle money so much, and ac- 
quire such keen contact, that when a counterfeit 
passes through their fingers, they throw it out 
with unerring judgment. 

There is a spiritual cuticle. It is the limbics 
of the spiritual humanity. It is the " tactile " 
organ of the intangible within. It is the with- 
in of the fleshly — the without of the immaterial. 
In heaven it will rim us round like a corona. 
We know persons who have what we call 
" tact " or touch. How delicately impressive 



88 A Little Lower than the Angels. 

they are. They read our feelings as angels 
read immortal chirography. They know the 
lights and shadows of the face, and can inter- 
pret them. They know how the soul shades 
through the body. The vesture of light which 
adorns them hangs in graceful folds from their 
very shoulders. It is so diaphanous the entire 
figure is one beam of glory. It is a perfect and 
beautiful medium of communication between 
them and the whole universe of men. 

And we should not forget the dominance of 
the will over this great outer organ. What it 
is to be lies largely with us. It is the impas- 
sive instrument of the will. It goes where we 
go, touches what we bid it, acts in harmony 
with our desires. The power of touch can be 
cultivated almost ad infinitum. There is no 
line of demarcation. The intense and fine dis- 
criminations of the blind and deaf illustrate 
this. What the tactile instrument is, will be, 
inner or outer, lies with us. 



>~»x«~ 



LIFE POWERS. 



~a&4e~ 



VII. 

THE LIFE WITHIN THE LIFE. 



I am the bread of life. — Jesus. 

So graze as you find pasture. — Shakespeare. 

These two things there are in God and man 
— light and life. They are also in every 
created thing in the universe. From the cen- 
ter to the rim of all that is, we find these re- 
flections of the Deity. While light is first in 
place, life is first in importance ; for the light 
is from the life. Though the sunbeams stream 
out and fill boundless spaces, the deep within 
is heat. So the within of the Lord is life, 
while the without is light. His garments 
shine with the radiance of His love. " In 
Him was life, and the life was the light of 
men." Love is at the heart of God, for " God 
is love " — while He is the light because He is 
love. 

91 



92 A Little Lower than the Angels. 

We touch now the center of light — the 
within of ourselves. That of which our light 
is but the configuration or forthgoing. Hith- 
erto we have considered intelligence; now, 
warmth. We deal now with determination 
rather than discrimination ; heart rather than 
the mind ; motion rather than radiance. While 
the light of the electric car irradiates the inte- 
rior, the power within is moving it. The 
power is first in importance. Without it, 
there could be neither light nor progress. If 
there is to be light, the tides of life must be 
poured through it. First God ; then " God 
said let there be light and there was light. " 
We consider now the central, volitional prop- 
erties of ourselves. 

Whence comes life ? Hunt and search as we 
will, we finally reach God. As the explorer of 
a river ascends to the mountain springs, the 
seeker for the beginnings of life finds God. 
We say we get heat from coal. Do we? 
Behind coal is wood ; behind wood, sun ; be- 
hind sun, the spiritual sun ; behind that, what ? 
— God ! The sun built the earth, built the 
verdure ; by its influence drew up trees and 
plants from the soil. And what is coal but 



The Life Within the Life. 93 

buried, petrified verdure? We have stepped 
backward until we have reached the sun. Who 
made that ? The reply is that it was created 
from the spiritual sun, the great central lumi- 
nary of luminaries. But how about the spir- 
itual sun ? Why, it must have come from God. 
Therefore it is God who kindles the fire on our 
hearth, the glow on our table. Wood, verdure, 
coal, oil, sun — are but varied combinations of 
the life and light of God. He has wrapped 
them within these coverings as a convenient 
gift to men. The love of God is at the center 
of what illuminates and warms our dwellings. 
We say we "get life and strength from 
vegetables and meat." " Bread is the staff of 
life." But the ox feeds on vegetation, vegeta- 
tion on the earth, the earth on the sun, the 
sun on God. By a beautiful indirection the 
Lord is manufacturing the myriad eatables 
as truly as the housewife spreads the table 
for the waiting family. Yes, more truly, for 
she but mixes, modifies, seasons, and cooks 
what He has created. The vegetable is simply 
soil, sun, and air commingled and made palata- 
ble. Enter the great laboratory or kitchen of 
nature, and you will find the Lord busily at work. 



94 A Little Lower than the Angels. 

As in the ancient days every road led to Rome, 
every avenue of research leads to the throne 
of a special Providence. All food, all love 
and life, is fundamentally from the Lord 
though it traverse paths of indirection. If we 
get a cablegram from Hongkong via Madras, 
Paris, London, and New York, we do not say 
the cablegram came from London, but from 
Hongkong. If we get a letter from a far 
country bearing postmarks of the various parts 
of the world over which it has traveled, we do 
not say it came from any one of these inter- 
mediate places, but from the point where it 
started. So when the Lord gives us life via 
food, earth, sun, — having numerous stamps 
and waymarks upon it, — we should not credit 
the gift to any of these intermediary sources ; 
we should not say " it comes from coal, vege- 
tables, meat, wool, medicines, the' balms of 
distant lands," but from the Lord. The earth 
is a mighty storehouse of food suspended in 
space by the good -will of the All-loving and 
the All-providing. Food, clothing, shelter, 
warmth, comfort, are the planet served up, 
modified, refined, and woven by the hand of an 
invisible Lover. Every existing thing feeds 



The Life Within the Life. 95 

on the earth in some of its myriad concoctions, 
while the earth feeds on the sun, and the sun 
on God. The rocks, mountains, and plains 
are threshed to powder in His giant mill and 
turned into that which shelters, nourishes, in- 
structs. We banquet on distilled and sub- 
limated planet. We eat the hills, and drink 
the seas, and breathe the airs of the great 
round world. Water is merely liquid planet ; 
air, but a more subtile form of planet. All 
outward comforts and uses are but the earth 
recombined, whipped, triturated, transmuted 
into manifold expressions of Divine Love. 

Food means force. It is the dynamic power 
within the power. The food of the engine is 
coal ; and until it gets that, it stands lifeless 
and dark upon the track. Feeding is the com- 
munication of the life of God to the finite life ; 
as the coaling of the engine is the communica- 
tion of motion to the engine. The end of 
feeding is transition, force, use. Physical 
power and utility are the result of the commu- 
nication of the life of the Lord to our life. 
Within the food is not only fleshly power, but 
mental and spiritual power. We glean from it 
these two discrete properties of force. One is 



96 A Little Lower than the Angels. 

the superstructure of the other. Food lies at 
the basis of every utility, from the miner in 
the abysses of the earth, to the angel who flies 
through the circles of the celestial heaven. 
Homer speaks of the ancient warrior equipped 
for battle : " His shield well lined, his horses 
meated well." Jesus said to His disciples, " I 
have meat to eat that ye know not of." Food 
is the force of every cell of the body, the basis 
of every thought of the mind, the wings of 
every devout utterance of the heart. The 
very end of feeding is use ; without use, the act 
is meaningless. The remark of Paul has eter- 
nal verity : " If any would not work neither 
should he eat." 

This is what is meant by the life within the 
life — the life of God within the life of man 
communicating his life to ours. We are cre- 
ated to exist and serve by this universal con- 
fession of dependence. We do not root our- 
selves in the soil, and live, as the plants do, by 
suction ; but we take the life within our life 
by a slight indirection. We take the jellied 
and canned refinements of the planet — the 
delicately preserved life of the globe — and 
give it to our organs and cells. Few pause to 



The Life Within the Life. 97 

reflect that we could not continue an instant 
without this incessant gift of Himself. Food, 
— solid, aerial, embalmed, crystallized, — in a 
million hues, shapes, odors, flavors, — is our 
instantaneous necessity. If it should cease, 
there would be a blank, an inky darkness ; as 
when the electric current is withheld. Food 
and hunger are both from the Lord ; one is the 
concomitant of the other ; one a call to the 
exercise of the other. Without this perpetual 
commissariat of the whole creation of men and 
angels, all but the Omnipotent Himself would 
be a negation. The Lord is here feeding us, 
as He fed Elijah by the brook, as He fed the 
grouped fifties on the grassy slopes of Galilee. 
The final elaboration of this " bread of God n 
is within the body. It is passed through the 
lips to what may properly be named the 
kitchen of the body. Here it is prepared and 
dispensed to the hungry and waiting organs. 
Here it is made ready for transfusion into 
bone, muscle, brain, nerve, tissue, cell, and by 
a miraculous act becomes the highest work of 
the creation — man in the image of God. And 
when man has become an angel of heaven, and 
has returned to God, the mystic cycle is com- 



98 A Little Lower than the Angels. 

pleted. This general kitchen is fabricated of 
innumerable little kitchens. As a desk has 
many small inclosures called pigeonholes, the 
stomach is a congregation of minor stomachs 
under a supervising head. Each by special 
dispensation is busy mixing, triturating, macer- 
ating, seething, extracting — like a corps of 
cooks in a great establishment under a gov- 
erning chef. Here is the chemical laboratory 
where the elixir of life is compounded. Here 
the material of every sort which enters the 
gateway of the lips is scrutinized, dissected, 
sorted, recombined, with the special need in 
mind of every minutest organ, cell, or tissue. 
A million million guests are waiting for the 
feast to be spread. There are no fine processes 
of the purveyor that do not go on here far 
more cleverly. The velocity and accuracy of 
its motion is amazing. And indeed it may 
well be, for the whole being depends upon its 
fidelity, quickness, and skill. Its discrimina- 
tion is almost omniscient. It knows where to 
dispatch this and that by speedy and reliable 
messengers. Meals are sent now up, now 
dowm, now across — by the directest ways. 
The purest and finest product is sent first to 



The Life Within the Life. 99 

the brain — to the lofty royal chamber where the 
lord of life resides. The next purest things 
are transmitted in graduated order to this and 
that worker until each has its needful and 
appropriate nourishment. There is the wis- 
dom and adaptation of the presiding mother 
of the home, who sees that the babe gets milk 
and the man meat. There is a great retinue 
of servants within us, traveling the threaded 
roads of our being from foot to crown. There 
is a vast and complex life within our life. 
Some of the finer extracts, essences, and 
spirits pass directly to the blood from the 
mouth; but, in general parlance, the stomach 
is the place of preparation and distribution. 
There are countless little mouths and tongues, 
within the major mouth and tongue, that drink 
in through microscopic apertures the first fruits. 
They are the "king's taster," who decides 
what is best to go to the royal table. Old 
John Gower states the case thus quaintly : 

"The stoniak coke is for the hall, and boileth mete for 
hem all 
To make hem mighty for to serve the herte that he 
shall not sterve." 

Everything pivots on the importation into 
:LcfC, 



100 A Little Lower than the Angels. 

the system of this outside vitality. It is thus 
every department of the metropolis of life gets 
its quota and builds its native tissue. The 
study of nutrition, digestion, assimilation, with 
its superb results throughout the material and 
spiritual universe, is intensely stimulating and 
interesting. Not only development is made 
possible, but matured and arrested growth is 
kept intact by this all-embracing metamorpho- 
sis. It is the foundation and rafters of the 
infinite creation. 

The building of man out of food is some- 
thing more than physical, as man is something 
more than flesh and blood. The grosser parts 
serve as a pabulum for bone and muscle — 
weave the framework, siding, and roofing of 
the soul's dwelling. As these visible and mate- 
rial products are floated on the mystic stream 
of the blood everywhere throughout the carnal 
domain, each cell reaches out its tiny hand and 
takes what it needs to rear its unique fabric, 
something as cities are builded and provinces 
populated and civilized by vessels of commerce. 
But there is an invisible, mental man upon the 
flesh man. We make our way to God, heaven, 
through nature. And this unseen us is the real 



The Life Within the Life. 101 

us — as the superstructure of the temple is the 
real temple. There is also a viewless human- 
ity, a race triumphant, the flower and fruit of 
the militant humanity. The invisible passes 
through nature, gathering as it goes certain 
sublimated properties of nature, carrying them 
into the sky, as the invisible fragrance of the 
violet is resurrected and glorified. The uirper- 
ceived, ethereal breath of the Lord breaks 
through and impregnates our mundane atmos- 
pheres, feeding the spirit, and returning again 
to the God from whom it started. Character, 
manhood, womanhood, divine sw r eetness, purity 
and innocence, affection, wisdom, steadfastness, 
have filtered through the rocks, the verdure, 
the flesh, and blossomed into soul. "From 
the Lord, through ultimates, back to the Lord." 
There is the greater heavenly man. The 
race is in the form of a divine personality. 
Souls are the food of eternity. Good souls are 
assimilated into the structure of this Greater 
Man. We die out of the deadness of the body 
into the livingness of the spirit, as the kernel 
of corn dies out of its deadness into w r aving 
fields and bursting granaries. The digestion 
of death uplifts and transmutes what it touches. 



102 A Little Lower than the Angels. 

It is the magic alchemy that delivers from the 
body of corruption and decay. It is not dis- 
solution, but continuance and elaboration. It 
is a vast and lovely refinement, a gathering-up 
of the enduring things of the world, the heart 
and soul of material objects, into man the 
image of God — and thus carrying them into 
heaven. 

Eating is therefore a sacrament, and is iden- 
tified with the holiest exercises of humanity. 
It is a prayer, a hymn of gratitude, and a con- 
fession of dependence. It is taking the life of 
the Lord into our life. Every meal is a Lord's 
Supper. It is the communication of the Divine 
Life and Love to the finite life. It is the Life 
within the life. This is the significance of 
the Holy Communion. The bread contributes 
something to the sustenance of the flesh, but 
within the bread is the bread of God that 
supports the heart. And, as the soul has the 
ascendency over the body, the bread within the 
bread is the supreme thing of the feast. In 
the outward act of supping with Him, His life 
and love is liberated from its grosser covering, 
and is absorbed by the spirit. There is the 
love within the love — the outer love going to 



The Life Within the Life. 103 

the flesh, the inner to the spirit. " I am the 
bread of life." He is the bread within the 
bread. He is the love within the love ; the 
Life within the life. Love and life are inter- 
changeable terms. 

" Nutriment is greatest when food is eaten with 
joy." Here lies the secret power of life's great 
banquet. We appropriate what we are inter- 
ested in. "Love is life" — and we may study 
ponderous volumes, read until we are dazed, 
weary, and confused, and get little into the 
mental constitution, if we do it as a task. 
What is not done with interest is largely lost. 
Read again the page that you traveled over 
yesterday with weariness, and if you have not 
marked the place, you can not tell that you 
ever saw it. Duty is better than idleness — 
but a very poor thing. It leads through bitter, 
bewildering ways and yields little profit. But 
love transfigures duty, extracts its mechanical 
drudgery, and lends it wings. Listening, study- 
ing, reading from duty are as profitless as eating 
from a sense of duty. There is something in it, 
but very little. It is the eager, spontaneous 
quest of truth that makes the man of truth. 
It is the joy of love that incarnates love. In 



104 A Little Lower than the Angels. 

any trade, calling, or profession love gives it 
force and power. For love is life, and with- 
out love all is dead and inane. It is feeding 
on the Lord with gladness that makes the life 
glad with a divine gladness. " The joy of the 
Lord is your strength." " Blessed are they that 
do hunger and thirst after righteousness ; for 
they shall be filled." It is the joy of reception 
that makes life's services at once easy and 
advantageous. 

"Children of yesterday, heirs of to-morrow, 
Lighten the labor and sweeten the sorrow. 

Now, while the shuttles fly faster and faster, 
Up, and be at it, at work with the Master, 

He stands at your loom ; room for Him — room ! " 



VIII. 

THAT MYSTICAL FLUID. 



That mystical fluid the Word of God calls the life.— J". M. 
Buckly. 

Celestial rosy red — love's proper hue. — Milton. 

The occult current, the ineffable red river 
that irrigates the human form, carries on its 
bosom, and within its bosom, fathomless arcana. 
It may be connected with the physical entirely, 
and considered only in its fleshly bearings. Or 
it may be connected with the intellectual ; we 
may go somewhat beneath its surface. Or it 
may be known to some to contain abysmal 
places of truth and love. When we have fol- 
lowed its windings through three provinces, we 
are on the road to a comprehensive understand- 
ing of it. Yet the way is even then an in- 
finite way. Its trinity of hues — red, white, 
and blue — beautifully heralds its inclusive- 
ness. It is the banner and standard of life, 
and of the everlasting life. 
105 



106 A Little Lower than the Angels. 

This ever-moving liquid is thrown through 
the body, completing its circuit by the aid of a 
great cluster of muscles called the heart. The 
heart is a kind of steam-engine, or water- 
works, constructed to supply the fleshly city 
with its necessary drink and ablution. The 
arteries and veins are conduits buried beneath 
the surface, a part of the hydraulic apparatus 
for accomplishing the grand circulation. Its 
machinery flies incessantly day and night, 
through every season, for upward of fourscore 
years ; its only holidays and rests, between the 
beats, when it relaxes for an instant. Listen 
at the breast, and you will hear its rhythmic, 
soft revolution — lug-ta, lug-ta, lug-ta. Put 
your fingers in the proper locality, and you will 
feel the whirl of its wheels. It usually makes 
seventy-two rotations a minute in the adult, 
one hundred and twenty in the babe. The 
liquid rushes along the main channels at the 
speed of ten feet a second ; but in the gossa- 
mer filaments, away out in the suburbs, slows 
to one inch in thirty seconds in order to give 
the thirsty organs an opportunity to drink 
before the stream flows by. Why is the circu- 
lation so constant, — insistent ? Because every 



That Mystical Fluid. 107 

tissue and cell in the human domain is calling 
loudly for what it has to offer. If we prick 
our finger with a needle, and make a rent in 
one of these pipes, the pipe leaks in a way 
similar to the bursting of some part of the 
plumbing in our dwellings. 

The heart comprises the central forcing 
apparatus and its forthgoings. It is, there- 
fore, really in the ivhole body ; for we can not 
put down the finest point anywhere without 
piercing a capillary. Like the nerves, the 
heart rays out in microscopic fibrils to every 
minutest cell. It is fourfold — the power-sta- 
tion, the arteries, the veins, and the capillaries. 
It is a fairy-like river flowing through a won- 
derful country. One of the most remarkable 
features of this river is that its source is at its 
mouth. Another remarkable thing about it is 
that it flows two ways. Gravitation does not 
hinder it ; it runs up mountains and pays little 
attention to natural depressions. It surges 
out of the main channel, bounding over hills 
and through dales, pushing its way into in- 
numerable tributaries, until it reaches the bor- 
ders of the land ; then turns, and now, like an 
ordinary stream flowing from tributaries to 



108 A Little Lower than the Angels. 

main current, makes its way back, by another 
route to the place from whence it started. This 
wonderful ellipsoid is but a continued, elabo- 
rated heart; the heart enclasping the whole 
body in a loving, life-giving caress. 

The central has four chambers — the upper 
pair being antechambers, where the patient 
fluid waits to be admitted to the place it seeks. 
The eager current presses ever toward this in- 
most recess, this holy of holies, for its baptism 
of truth and power. The thick muscular walls 
of the central are divided into two halves, two 
hearts in one, each working together with the 
most exquisite adaptation. There is the pul- 
monary heart and the arterial heart. There is 
the red side and the blue side, the love side and 
the truth side, both united to do an illumina- 
ting, sacrificial work. The right main-chamber 
hurls the fluid through the lungs for purifica- 
tion and nourishment. The left sends it careen- 
ing out to the tips of being with its precious 
gift. After its immolation, having spent its 
rich energies, it returns weary, in a quiet, 
steady tide ; but when rejuvenated in the lungs, 
when it has " bathed its weary soul in seas of 
heavenly rest," it hastens out again in mighty, 



That Mystical Fluid. 109 

eager pulses. Lest the veins should burst by 
the closing of the heart's doors during its con- 
traction, these anterooms are provided where 
the home-coming and depleted liquid can con- 
gregate and wait, ready to fill the main pulmo- 
nary chamber instantly when at last the door 
is thrown open in cordial welcome. It is some- 
thing like waiting at the oculist's for our turn 
and going forth with sight renewed. 

The blood is the life — is therefore the body. 
(" The life, which is the blood." Gen. ix, 4.) 
" It is the body in the sense of being organic 
by priority to the body, though not without the 
body." It is the body in the sense that it rays 
out into every microscopic part, and builds the 
body from itself. A plate of the vascular sys- 
tem is a vivid illustration. It is the nutritive 
fluid of the tissue. It is the body in the sense 
of being the spiritual and ponderable essence of 
the races. " Blood is thicker than water." 
" Blood will tell." It runs in subtile, indefina- 
ble effluence through the Teuton, the Slav, the 
Mongolian, and the Semite. By a veiled co- 
partnership with the soul it constructs the fabric 
of heredity. 

This wonderful stream feeds, waters, and 



110 A Little Lower than the Angels. 

cleanses ; as the tributaries of our land float in 
nutritive freight, fill the reservoirs and pipes of 
our cities, and bear away on the same bosoms, 
to the great purifying sea, the garbage and 
waste. So this confluence of life nourishes, 
irrigates, and performs the ablutions of the in- 
ward man. Shakespeare asks, " Why does my 
blood thus muster to my heart ? " The answer 
is, to give it the cleansing and power that will 
enable it to do its assigned uses. As it is 
thrown through the pneumatic organs in a 
delicate azure spray, as it mounts to the high 
places of God, it gladly yields up its waste, re- 
ceiving in exchange life and light. At this 
point occurs the inscrutable transformation of 
the blue to the carnation. Truth and love meet 
in those exalted abodes, and, uniting hands, go 
forth elastic, joyous, swift to do. " Mercy and 
truth are met together — righteousness and peace 
have kissed each other." They mingle, the 
blue being overcome by the red, and hasten 
forward with a single hue and impulse. They 
conspire to do a common work of self-abnega- 
tion and benefaction. 

In itself the vital stream is colorless — it is 
red because of the freight which it bears. It 



That Mystical Fluid. Ill 

is red as the sea is green, and the sky blue ; not 
actually, but by appearances. The body can 
not exist upon water alone ; it must have bread. 
Therefore the blood is more than fluid. It 
carries on its surface, and underneath its sur- 
face, countless drifting bodies, tiny rafts loaded 
with life. These are oxygen and iron carriers. 
There are microscopic billions of them. They 
are of two colors — red and white, the white 
being much less numerous than the red. The 
blood is red not in the sense that it has no 
white, but by the predominance of the red. 
Prick your finger and a scarlet drop will start. 
Place that drop on a slide, under a powerful 
glass, and you will see dozens of minute yellow- 
ish bodies, which are these same red rafts. 
They are yellow by transmitted light. They 
are Lilliputian floating discs, their edges thicker 
than their centers, having a great tendency to 
turn on their sides and run into rouleaux like 
piles of coins. They continually thirst for 
oxygen, and have wonderful powers of absorb- 
ing it. They have tiny arms that at once 
begin to feel around the riches of the air and 
carry away as much as possible. They rush out 
and give to the crying tissue, returning imme- 



112 A Little Lower than the Angels. 

diately for more. They hunt for oxygen as men 
hunt for money. They are not satisfied unless 
they are getting and giving. What a beautiful 
example of service ! So the soul should seek 
for the beautiful and the true, that it may bear 
it to others. Their entire career is one of im- 
petuous, absorbing use ; a looking to God, and 
a yielding what He gives that they may have 
more to give. Without them the body could 
not exist an hour. 

The rendezvous of the blood is the vital part 
of us. From that critical within flows forth 
affection in healing, invigorating streams. 
Along its myriad ways hastens the soul. The 
blood and the emotions cooperate with the finest 
harmony. Swedenborg says that in "every 
animal the nature of the soul determines the 
nature of the blood." And " the nature of the 
food and blood together produce a correspond- 
ing form and structure." Bees fed peculiarly 
will be transformed into queens. The people 
of the Golden Age, mild, sagacious, pure, guile- 
less, were nourished and built on grains and 
fruits. As the orb of day creates a congenial 
environment, the heart of man, by an intrinsic 
configuration, does the same for itself. u Out 



That Mystical Fluid. 113 

of the abundance of the heart the mouth 
speaketh." " The soul is form and doth the 
body make." The heart and the man are 
identical in fundamentals, different only in 
structure. Therefore the heart is the paramount 
vital part of us. There could be nothing with- 
out it. The breaking of the heart, the corrupt- 
ing of the heart, the renewing of the heart, are 
conclusive and sweeping. 

This is why it stands for the embodiment of 
love. " Love is life," and it is the rendezvous 
of life. The life of God is love. And as God 
is at the heart of the universe, love and life are 
at its heart. " The blood is red by virtue of 
correspondence of the heart and the blood with 
love." " Because of correspondence of love 
with the heart the blood can not but redden and 
point to its origin." Milton speaks of it as 
" Celestial rosy red, love's proper hue." The 
heart must be the seat of love, for the Lord 
has commanded that we love " Him with all 
our heart." And we can love only with the 
organ of love, as we can perceive only with the 
organ of truth. The heart is love in its mo- 
tion, as it continually pours forth its life in a 
sacrificial tide, It lives to die ; its every action 
8 



114 A Little Lower than the Angels. 

is otherward. It has in all ages, and by all 
peoples, been accounted the home of the affec- 
tions. It has been considered the lovelier, the 
better part of us. The fountain of all good in- 
centives and doings, the place of joy, courage, 
patience, sympathy, constancy. In the Word 
it is the domain of the moral life and the seat 
of character. The bosom is the place of love 
and rest. John, the "beloved disciple," pil- 
lowed his head upon the breast of Infinite 
Love. Lazarus was carried by angels to the 
bosom of Abraham. Blood is the universal 
symbol of kinship, nearness, likeness. Those 
with whom love prevails are least alterable by 
outward considerations. Yet there is a reversed 
heart ; love has its antipodes. The Lord 
built the heart as the mansion of goodness ; it 
is dedicated to worship, to sweetness, to rever- 
ence, to holiness. And he still appeals to it for 
what it should be. He knows we are essen- 
tially what we may be. But the pendulum of 
love swinging to its extreme opposite passes 
into the region of hate. There is the flush of 
shame as well as affection. There is the crim- 
son of bitter rage. And there is that sweet 
illuminating tint that tells us the soul is bathed 



That Mystical Fluid. 115 

in the very purest fervor. Diseases of the 
heart, physical or spiritual, are most fatal, most 
subversive, of the integrity of the whole man, 
and when the heart stoops, it stoops lowest ; as 
a woman, when degraded, outmans man. " The 
heart is deceitful above all things and desper- 
ately wicked." 

The soul masters the blood, and uses it as a 
willing instrument. We can " summon up the 
blood, disguise fair nature with ill-favored 
rage," and " imitate the action of the tiger." 
We can, by force of character and will, inocu- 
late it with tenderness or cruelty. In anger it 
suddenly becomes infused with a nameless 
something that makes it acrid, sour, and rough. 
In envy it attracts particles which give it a 
livid hue. In grief it becomes sluggish, viscid, 
glutinous, producing heaviness and torpor. In 
mania it secretes a poisonous spume that makes 
the very saliva venom. The emotions control 
the blood as the driver handles his steeds. It 
is sent rushing from its central reservoir with 
great impetuosity, or slows to a serene and 
cooling current, as the spiritual momentum in- 
dicates. The blood and the emotions are cor- 
respondent. In fact, emotion is the blood of 



116 A Little Lower than the Angels. 

the spirit, — the blood within the blood, — and 
therefore one answers the other instantane- 
ously. Thus the blood — and so the whole body 
— is under the immediate dictation of the spirit. 
We determine of what essence and quality this 
occult elixir shall be. 

Therefore by indirection it becomes the par- 
ent of great or vicious moments and intuitions. 
It is, in all probability, the unknown spring of 
the best genius, the well-head of every great 
Muse. In Goethe, in Byron, in Poe, in the 
coldly classic writers of antiquity, there is 
something lacking. In the Hebrew prophets, 
in the writers of the universal hymns called 
the Psalms of David, in Shakespeare, and 
Wordsworth, and Tennyson, we feel the warm, 
pulsing undertow of great hearts. It is the 
heart — the blood physical and spiritual, for the 
two can not be separated without destroying 
the quality of each — that feeds the Pierian 
spring. There can be no proper greatness 
without the proper blood. What drops below 
this may be beautiful, may be chaste, may be 
mathematically true, but it will lack the human 
quality that links it to God. The blood of the 
Father, the Love Supreme, can alone give 
sanity and fervor. 



That Mystical Fluid. 117 

So there are men of the heart and men of the 
head. Men immaculate as the snow — cold, 
white, faultless, barren. Beautiful as the crea- 
tions of Phidias, — correct, with curves and 
ovals in due proportion to the whole figure, — 
but dead as the stone out of which they are cut ; 
sublime as the far-oif hills robed in blue 
atmosphere and as intangible and unresponsive. 
But the immaculate, the correct, the beautiful, 
the proportionate, the sublime, lacking one thing, 
lacks all. As the dead man without the car- 
mine fluid that animates him is not a man, but 
a corpse. When the motionless, cold figure 
glows with the sweet and thrilling human, then 
God's purposes seem accomplished. Without 
this, man is a dark, airless, verdureless satel- 
lite dropping through chill spaces. Without 
the emerald, what is earth ? Without life, what 
is man ? Without love, what is soul — what is 
God? 

' ' Mightier far 
Than strength of nerve or sinew, or the sway 
Of magic potent over sun and star, 
Is love. ' ' — Wordsworth. 



— -v-v^f^ 



UTILITIES. 



~»K«~ 



IX. 

THE GOSPEL OF THE FACE. 



Your face, my Thane, is a book, where men 
May read strange matters. — Macbeth. 

The light upon her face 
Shines from the windows of another world. — Longfellow. 

The face was designed to be as flawless crys- 
tal. The word is from the Sanskrit root — to 
shine. It is normally a transparency through 
which the spirit sees, and is seen. Facets, as 
of diamonds, are " little faces " through which 
the heart of the precious jewel flashes and 
gleams. The facade of a building is the build- 
ing's front explaining the character of its in- 
terior. The expressive countenance indicates 
how life is received, how entertained, how re- 
flected and terminated. 

"Read o'er the volume of young Paris' face, 
And find delight writ there with beauty's pen ; 
Examine every several lineament ; 
And what obscure in the fair volume lies 
Find written in the margin of his eyes. ' ' 
121 



122 A Little Lower than the Angels. 

The face unrepressed by guile, unpetrified by 
heredity or hypocrisy, is a versatile symbol of 
the personality behind it — its perfect reporter. 
In the divine man or woman the angel of the 
head gazes through the gauzy, diaphanous cur- 
tain that drops between. One is the letter, the 
other the delivery. One is the cabalistic, in- 
audible click of the mind, the other the de- 
spatch. In the face sits the spirit invested with 
a garment of light. 

A most fascinating topic is the gesture lan- 
guage of the face. It was the primeval ver- 
nacular, the mobile, lovely medium of speech 
long before articulate words were known. At 
the dawn of man, as will be again at man's 
finished creation and crowning, the soul uttered 
itself by infinite lights and shadows chasing 
each other over the visage, by the muscular 
variations of the mind's foreground. Before 
men could use their arms and bodies as a means 
of interpreting thought, their glances spoke. 
We may watch to-day this identical evolution 
working itself out on the plane of infancy. The 
babe opens communication with the world 
about it in this same elder vocabulary. The 
dialect of the cradle is the far-back medium of 



The Gospel of the Face. 123 

human conversation. It begins to utter itself 
in pure pantomime. Its initial sounds, too, 
are the inarticulate cry of the animal, the ex- 
pressive grunt and intonation of the savage. 
Its pathetic pleadings for help, its protestations 
of neglect, its intimations of pain or restless- 
ness, its assent to pleasurable conditions, its 
ecstacies and satisfactions, are each inscribed 
upon the tablet of its face. We adapt our- 
selves to its state and attempt to reply in 
cognate speech. We smile, we modulate the 
features, we nod, and purse the lips, and 
change the eyes, so that it almost invariably 
understands us. We are compelled to employ 
the unique chirography of the babe. Words 
and sentences are the second stage of language ; 
the first is gesture, primarily facial gesture. 
The oratory that charms, the volumes that in- 
struct, were rocked in this antique cradle of 
nomenclature. How very much may be done, 
even now, in the realm of gesture may be noted 
in the adaptations of the not-speaking man — 
the deaf-mute. As to expression, he is reduced 
to the first ages of the world. Hoav very little 
articulate language has to do with real conversa- 
tion is here realized. The deaf-mute converses 



124 A Little Lower than the Angels. 

almost as freely as those who speak. The atti- 
tudes, the genuflections, the play of emotions, 
the swing of arms and poise of body, the work- 
ings of the lips and eyes, are kaleidoscopic. It 
is intensely interesting to watch a deaf-mute 
relate a story. His sentences are dramatic. 
As men learn to use more perfectly the articu- 
late speech much of the graceful and charm- 
ing accompaniment of motion ceases. An im- 
passive method comes into play that is perhaps 
more finished, yet less attractive. I once 
watched a stammerer, in a waiting station, relate 
to a crowd gathered about him the exciting in- 
cidents of a recent ball game. Hindered by 
his impediment from getting along at the rate 
of his thought, he supplemented his words with 
intense and quaint motions that brought into 
requisition his entire body from face to feet. 
His impromptu audience stood transfixed with 
pleasure over his endeavor to get his ideas 
ultimated. 

Therefore in the normal man, the man as 
God made him, we " find the mind's construc- 
tion in the face." It is the map of the soul, 
the dial that marks the time within, the mobile 
image of the changeful spirit. Faces are the 



The Gospel of the Face. 125 

natural exponents of mind and heart. They 
are windows in bodies through which the world 
looks on spirit. Unless there is simulation, 
or unless heredity has made the features rigid, 
and hindered their natural play, every face so 
accurately defines its owner that when we get 
thoroughly acquainted with him we can not 
imagine that he could have a different one. 
The inner shaping influence sets its mark there ; 
it reveals the type of man it shields. We say 
of a newly arrived Hibernian, " the map of 
Ireland is in his face." We mean his very 
blood is figured in his features, and proclaims 
his origin. This is true of nearly all races and 
nations. The hidden life, flowing out to the 
ends of being, has written its autobiography 
there. " The mind and brain are preeminently 
alive, and the face is prepared by creation to be 
the recipient and mirror of their manifold 
states." It lives only by communication with 
these — as the sunbeam lives only by connection 
with its parent orb. Cut the ray of light, and 
its play on wall or floor ceases instantly. Faces 
exist only as reporters of what lives behind 
them. They are automatic, instrumental ; 
manipulated and commanded by their owners. 



126 A Little Lower than the Angels. 

Lacking the within, the face would be as dead 
and expressionless as the clod. u They in the 
other life who have nothing of the rational (no 
wisdom or affection) appear without faces." 
Therefore the face is not a mirror ; it is a trans- 
parency. It does not reflect the figure of him 
who stands before it, but rather shows the on- 
looker the deep-lying personality of the other. 
Through it soul is seen, as the diver sees the 
pearl beneath the limpid waters. It is such a 
glass as we use for windows, and not what we 
use for mirrors. The open face is most win- 
ning. We are drawn to it, won by it. " Lake 
Leman woos me with its crystal face." As- 
surance is doubly sure when through the lucid 
covering a heart unfettered, unabashed, un- 
reserved, looks forth. In the Word the face 
stands for the character, the nature. " Seeking 
the Lord's face " is seeking to know Him as He 
is. When we " see no longer as in a glass 
darkly, but face to face," we shall "know as 
we are known." The little children " whose 
angels do always behold the face of the Father" 
get the purest glimpses of Divine Love. When 
we shall see His face, and have His name writ- 



The Gospel of the Face. 127 

ten upon our foreheads, we shall have become 
so like Him that we shall understand Him. 

The language of the face is not by analogy, 
but by correspondence. Radiance of face and 
heart are very different in expression, yet they 
perfectly harmonize. Inward joy makes a 
certain picture, produces a certain light, a par- 
ticular combination which really has no like- 
ness to that within, yet has correspondence. 
How totally unlike are an emotion of grief and 
a tear, yet there is perfect harmony. There is 
not resemblance, not analogy, but perfect cor- 
respondence. Instantly we know that one 
belongs to the other. Music in the soul, and 
the sounds of the violin or organ have corre- 
spondence, have harmony, yet not likeness. 
The camera produces a copy of the thing that 
lies before it ; correspondence, something very 
far from a copy, yet if possible more distinctly 
a part of the original. Even the infant detects 
immediately the feeling of the mother by her 
look and voice. Joy or pain, ecstacy or fright, 
it will read as we read a book. When the 
heart is surcharged with love, when consuming 
passion burns, when some new interest arrives, 
the features instantly tell the story. How the 



128 A Little Lower than the Angels. 

orator watches for the responses to his thought 
in the upturned sea of faces that floats and rip- 
ples and gleams in the pews below. He is 
turning the human kaleidoscope round and 
round and watching its ineffable transforma- 
tions. This is his highest joy, his great inspira- 
tion — to see his thought shine back to him as 
the sunlit waters answer the parent orb, as the 
rainbow and the painted east smile and blush 
at the "bridal of the earth and sky." The 
one means the other — yet how different in 
their ways of showing it ! We sometimes 
tell what a soul is by the eyes. There is 
a true, calm, deep something there, inscrutable, 
yet at once awakening trust. As difficult of 
analysis as love, but as simple and sweet. 
" God is love " ; we know that, we rest in it, 
but all the saints fail to tell us what love is. 
This correspondence is always perfect where 
repression or simulation does not interfere. 
Little children are usually plastic under the 
molding fingers of their emotions. The inner 
continually plays before us on the mutable 
tablet of the flesh. Their unconventional, art- 
less ways, their inability to pose, their as yet 
untrained will, allow a correspondence as pure 



The Gospel of the Face. 129 

as what we find in the verdure or the sky. 
The heart is, as we say, " pinned to the sleeve." 
The common sense of mankind agrees at once 
that this transaction is a case of correspondence. 
There is a brightness or sadness that is incom- 
prehensible on mere mechanical grounds. We 
know it is the direct and vivid effect of inter- 
nals working upon externals, that the face is 
the mouthpiece and masterpiece of a correspon- 
dence omnipresent in the body. 

Some call the spirit the unsubstantial, the 
impalpable, and the shadowy. But it is so 
much more substantial than flesh that it is 
the flesh's creator and master. It is the un- 
seen workman shaping the clay in our very 
presence and sight. Watch the potter with the 
lump of earth whirling on the wheel, the inani- 
mate, shapeless thing growing into a beauty of 
form that will make it immortal. The flesh is 
fluid in the hands of the soul. We know men 
only by the answering body. Every muscle, 
every nerve, every intonation, every attitude, is 
the man within the man uttering himself to the 
world. Without this interpretation, we should 
be as ignorant of those about us as if they 
were not. The flesh is as fluid to the spirit as 
9 



130 A Little Lower than the Angels. 

the rippling waters are to the winds. Facile, a 
derivative of the word face — meaning yielding, 
ductile, pliant, flexible. Facility is a slightly 
changed form of the same word, meaning readi- 
ness, mobility, plasticity. The spirit is actually 
doing for the face what the sculptor does for 
his image — he writes his ideal there, he im- 
presses himself ; only where the sculptor makes 
a single impression and leaves it, the soul 
makes many. All life is a repetition of the 
soul in the face ; it is man's spirit attempting 
to write his character in sculpture, in painting, 
in architecture, in books, in the fabric of the 
whirling loom, in myriad industries and sci- 
ences, — on the very earth. The world as it 
stands in civilization is an illuminated parch- 
ment of the greater human soul. 

" The grand law of Christian power goes 
with faces." In its mystic abysses are gospels 
and judgments. Is there anything so terrible as 
a rebuking face ? Is there anything so inviting 
as one lit with love ? Every child recoils from 
a tender, grieved expression in its mother's 
look. It is worse than daggers or rods. It 
knows, too, when that heaven bends over it 
with approval. The face of Jesus of Naza- 



The Gospel of the Face. 131 

reth ! Shining on Hermon, wrestling in the 
wilderness, weeping over Jerusalem, gazing 
into the grave of Lazarus, pleading in Geth- 
scmane, looking from the cross, lit with resur- 
rection glory, gleaming out of the golden can- 
dlesticks ! As Peter saw it when he warmed 
himself in Caiphas' court ! As Judas saw it 
when he took the sop ! As John saw it from 
Calvary ! As Paul saw it on the Damascus 
highway ! " The light of the knowledge of 
the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ ! " 
" And His face was as it were the sun shining 
in his strength." Hell was never so deep, jus- 
tice never so dreadful, or so close at hand, as 
when it lowered in the Divine face. Heaven 
was never so near, love never so unutterable 
and masterful, as when it found its correspond- 
ence there. 

The gait, bearing, and postures of the body 
have ever been used interchangeably for spirit- 
ual states. Holding up the face, the human 
attribute, is the claim of innocence. " Grecian 
philology baptized man, Anthropos — the being 
with the upturned [heavenly] face." Through- 
out the Word physical uprightness is significative 
and comprehensive of moral uprightness. The 



132 A Little Lower than the Angels. 

gift of physical perpendicularity is reserved for 
man alone. It is the insignia of the Great 
King stamped upon his front, proclaiming him 
heir to immortality. Every living thing below 
man keeps its eyes on the earth. It never 
looks at the stars. Even the eagle watches the 
abysses below for its prey. It is the universal 
feeling that the vertical posture, the open, lifted 
countenance, belong to mental and moral integ- 
rity. The criminal drops his eyes, looks at the 
floor ; innocence gazes with clear unwavering 
vision into the face of God and man. The 
unsteady, evasive, downcast look brings in- 
stantly a sense of misgiving. To be sure, there 
are exceptions, as in times of devotion. In 
worship the head is dropped as a mark of rev- 
erence. The four and twenty elders in the 
high place of the universe, robed in white and 
crowned with gold, fall upon their faces before 
the throne. 

To-day the gospel should get proclamation in 
human faces. It should incarnate itself in this 
potential manner. The faces of angels are in- 
effably expressive. There are vast oceans of 
love, wisdom, and tenderness in them. They 
speak a various language. They light, guide, 



The Gospel of the Face. 133 

instruct, comfort, through these wonderful 
ways. The look of an angel has volumes in it. 
It is so impressive that it sinks into the deepest 
places of the heart. In George Macdonald's 
" Lilith " the Mother of Sorrows unmasks her 
face, and the wily, wayward Lilith finds herself 
melted into penitence by the shining of an af- 
fection and sweetness transcending description. 
If Christians are to do their best work, the 
gospel should beam from their faces. The 
gospel is nothing now, any more than it was at 
the first, unless reincarnated, and kept incar- 
nate. It must get expression ; not through 
tongues alone, not through catechisms and 
propositional wisdom, not through the din and 
clatter of argument, — but by immortal affection 
and purity recognized in human faces. As 
George Eliot has said : " There is a power in 
the direct glance of a sincere loving soul, 
which will do more to dissipate prejudice and 
kindle charity than the most elaborate argu- 
ments." The real sermons are in great, pure 
feelings, generosities of holy sacrifice, divine 
patience as rayed through the face of God in 
the imaged face of man. I shall never forget 
one great day in my life when Phillips Brooks 



134 A Little Loiver than the Angels. 

hovered over me like a heaven. I shall never 
attempt to describe it, for it is indescribable. 
Its gospel shadows me to-day as the bright 
cloud shadowed the favored three on Hermon. 
Even though the features be careworn, battered, 
scarred with trial, furrowed with tragic experi- 
ences in the domains of faith and life — a certain 
celestial contour, an unfathomable illumination, 
a something there beyond reckoning, betrays 
the high state of the soul within. " Though 
thy tackle's torn thou showest a noble vessel." 
The face can only truly live by this perpetual 
reincarnation. The soul can only tell its story 
thus, for without the face it can not find ade- 
quate delivery. 

Yet, after all has been said, no face can per- 
fectly represent its soul ; no more than God can 
perfectly represent Himself on the field of na- 
ture ; no more than man, in his arts and indus- 
tries, can explicitly display his genius, unveil 
all the greatness of his being. Something must 
always be lost when a superior plane is drama- 
tized on an inferior one. Could the face of the 
Saviour fully indicate Omnipotence? Could 
that countenance as of lightning, as it were the 
sun shining in its strength, mapped with inde- 



The Gospel of the Face. 135 

scribable beauty, more than hint at that within ? 
The soul is always greater than any exposition 
it can make. God is always greater than any 
revelation of Himself. 



X. 

THE LARYNGEAL HARP. 



Speech is but broken light upon the depth 
Of the unspoken ; even your loved words 
Float in the larger meaning of your voice 
As something dimmer. — George Eliot. 

Fit language there is none 

For the heart's deepest things. — Loioell. 

Man is made to sing. He has caught up 
immortal measures and translated them to 
earth. Within his body is the harp of harps. 
It is the first musical instrument, all others 
being adaptations of this ancient model. The 
multiplicity of inventions in wood and metal 
are all variations of the harp. Either the 
chords are breathed upon, like the larynx, the 
organ reeds, the seolian lyre, or they are struck, 
like the piano, or thrummed, like the harp. 
The world-euphonies that fairly vie with angels 
have been evolved from the human throat as a 
suggestion and prototype. 

The lungs, with their channels of varied 
136 



The Laryngeal Harp. 137 

utterance, compose this fleshly orchestra. The 
larynx lies just behind and below the promi- 
nence in the throat called the "Adam's apple/' 
It is a cartilaginous frame, strung with two 
chords, called the vocal chords. Its possibilities 
are so wonderful that it might be named "a 
harp of a thousand strings" instead of two. 
These chords are breathed over, as in the wind 
harp. There are tiny muscles that act as exe- 
cuting fingers — that tighten or relax the strings 
like the violinist's hand. It is a pneumatic 
instrument pure and simple. The lungs as 
bellows force the air through the trachea and 
larynx, producing sound ; and sound, reaching 
the tongue, teeth, and lips, is chiseled into 
words and sentences. Thus it comes to the 
ears of men in song or speech. The chest is 
like the body of the violin, the pipe of the 
organ, or the frame of the lyre. The forehead 
and entire skull contribute to the richness of 
tone. Some parts of the instrument cater to 
tone ; others, to expression. The most beauti- 
ful chorals may be produced with no articulate 
thought. Or they may be given a body, an 
outward form and symmetry, by the shaping 
organs of speech. When the throat is culti- 



138 A Little Lower than the Angels. 

vated to its loftiest reaches, there is nothing 
else on earth so sweet, majestic, and inspiring. 
What is speech ? It is primarily gesture ; 
especially facial gesture. Finally it assumed 
the form of uttered words. Noav, these words 
are written, carved, printed, and reproduced 
until they drop on the world like the leaves of 
autumn. In brief, every work of man is man's 
thought taking tangible and visible outlines. 
Speech proper is the cutting of the tones of the 
voice into articulate words. The teeth, tongue, 
and lips, under the guidance of the brain, 
catch the sound-waves as they pass to the outer 
air, that instant shaping them into logic, poetry, 
philosophy, and song. Just here the heart and 
mind meet, and, uniting, create speech ; as the 
sunlight and heat, joining hands, fashion the 
rocks — the globe of the earth. It is really 
man's invisible self standing off where he can 
behold it — where he can read it, as it assumes 
varied and multiplied melodies. Speech is not 
exactly making noises, or molding those noises 
into words — for a parrot can do that, an auto- 
maton can do that ; it is giving thought appro- 
priate clothing. Thought and its vesture must 
both emanate from the same individuality. 



The Laryngeal Harp. 139 

Speech is twofold ; it is inner and outer, it 
has a soul and a body. It is also twofold in 
its duplicity ; it is a pair within a pair. Affec- 
tion and truth are the two halves of the inner ; 
sound and articulation the two halves of the 
outer. The inner is feeling and thought ; the 
outer, tone and expression. The vowels are 
the diapason of feeling ; the deeper, fuller, 
richer voices welling up from spiritual abysses. 
The consonants are the vesture of these voices, 
intelligence robing them in presentable and in- 
terpretative garments. One is the reporter of 
the heart ; the other, of the brain. One is the 
impulse ; the other, the guide. 

Speech is crystallized thought — therefore 
crystallized life. It is spirit surviving in 
books, inscriptions, and architectural creations 
after it has ceased to be incarnate. To-day we 
behold Plato and Moses ; for we behold their 
thought. The thought of master-minds is those 
minds set in durable, eternal substances. Job, 
Homer, Socrates, John, are preserved in ever- 
lasting parchments, and we take their sen- 
tences, tear them open as we do a letter from a 
friend, and read their souls. The never-les- 
sening wine and bread is spread for succeeding 



140 A Little Lower than the Angels. 

generations, perennial as the widow's cruse of 
oil, and the bread of Jesus broken on the slopes 
of Gallilee. 

How did speech reach its present flowering ? 
We know that a single law brings everything 
up, from a daisy to a universe ; a single master- 
principle, crystallized in a single master-word 
— evolution. Speech, like everything else, 
grew up. Philology is one of the most en- 
trancing of the sciences. It leads us back 
to the dawn of utterance. It carries us into 
dim, prehistoric epochs, down where the roots 
of human rhetoric lie buried. Of course, there 
was a time when men did not speak with 
the mouth. The infant lives over again the 
experiences of the race. When it makes faces, 
casts out its arms, laughs and cries, it shows us 
the ancient stamp on the coin of phonetics. 
It tells us how men and women in the long-ago 
sought to deliver themselves. " Before Homo 
sapiens was evolved he must have been necessa- 
rily preceded by Homo alalus — the not-speak- 
ing man." If evolution is the method of 
creation, the faculty of talking could have been 
no sudden gift. That men spoke immediately 
has the same relation to exact science as that 



The Laryngeal Harp. 141 

the world was created in six days of twenty- 
four hours each. Vast epochs are gathered up 
in poetical and allegorical transcriptions. There 
was a time when men " lisped in numbers." 
There was a far day when they spoke in sylla- 
bles, hesitatingly, as the child spells out its 
simple sentences at the teacher's knee. No 
full-grown words entered then into the fabric 
of speech. There were brief monosyllabic 
utterances, each relating to some activity. 
Vowel sounds were universal. This is why 
speech, in its ultimates, is in its greatest power 
— it lies couched in the deepest places of the 
life. The primitive language is the radical 
language — the roots of the mighty tree that has 
cast its branches over the whole earth. Sen- 
tences as yet were not ; each sound was a sen- 
tence. It is true of humanity that " When I 
was a child I spake as a child." From inar- 
ticulate cries man has built up a vernacular 
word by word, as the body was built up cell by 
cell. And it is with language-making as with 
world-making — the process is yet going on. 
Daily we are coining words, adding to their 
volume of tone as well as their architecture. 
Both the world and its utterances have arisen 



142 A Little Lower than the Angels. 

like a tree, expanding daily into beauty and 
fruitfulness ; and neither has yet reached matu- 
rity. The well-known fact that the born deaf 
man is at the same time a dumb man is almost 
a final reply to the affirmation that the powers 
of expression are an original and intuitive 
faculty with man. If man could manufacture 
words, and collect them into comprehensive 
philosophies, to any extent he chose, there was 
little reason why he should be presented with 
them ready-made. And it is an eternal law 
that what man can do, God does not for him. 

Human speech is the speech of the animal 
infinitely augumented and modulated. Here 
is a significant discovery of etymology. Skeat 
says that the very word " speech " lost an " r " 
along about the eleventh century. It is from 
the Teutonic base sprak, of which the original 
sense was merely to make a noise — to cry out. 
This hints at a distant day when language was 
composed of sounds merely — of significant 
intonations. The howl of the dog, the neigh 
of the horse, the bleat of the lamb, are linguis- 
tic protoplasm and show us how men once 
conversed. Darwin has detected four or five 
modulations in the bark of a dog. This is the 



The Laryngeal Harp. 143 

dog's vocabulary. Each bark means something. 
When the deer suspects anything wrong, it 
utters a low note, at which the entire herd lift 
their heads — this means caution. If it proves 
a real danger, the leader utters a sharp, loud 
cry that means " Run for your life," — and the 
whole herd take to their heels. The infant 
begins with significant sounds. When it says 
"moo" for cow, and "bow-wow" for dog, 
and "mew" for cat, and "toot-toot" for 
engine, and " tick-tick " for watch, it is telling 
us how the race began to speak. It is conduct- 
ing us back through the ever-narrowing ways 
of philology to its source. It is true here 
that " a little child shall lead them." We are 
beginning to study the child more and more, 
and are finding out it can teach us very much 
more than we can teach it. And so from this 
simple beginning language has reached the hill- 
tops of the present. It stands like the Pillars 
of Hercules, to show us how far we have come ; 
yet, not like those pillars, fixed and immovable, 
it ever advances. As we have traveled on, 
spirits that have looked deeper into the heart 
of things have gathered up what they have 
seen into literature, have coined new terms of 



144 A Little Lower than the Angels. 

expression, carried the standard yet a little 
further, and left the durable results to those 
who should follow. 

Here, then, lies the secret of the rise of 
intellect ; also the secret of the rise of civiliza- 
tion. Speech, with its treasures of thought 
and discovery, has made it possible for man 
to stand, as it were, on the shoulders of those 
before him. Evolution up to the time of the 
invention of language had but one method of 
banking its accounts — heredity. And heredity 
is mortally slow. Heredity is something left 
in the system, in the form of latent instincts 
and inclinations, for each generation to somehow 
discover and strengthen. Heredity is some- 
thing dim, intangible, and intellectually un- 
known to those without sciences and philoso- 
phies. When speech arrived, instead of sowing 
his gains on the winds of heredity, man pinned 
them to winged words, transmitting them to 
posterity. Then posterity was able to treasure 
the thought and discovery contained in them, 
and start from that point of vantage. The 
race then began to rapidly run up a fortune in 
brain-matter. One generation could bank all its 
gains and will them to the next ; and so the 



The Laryngeal Harp. 145 

ball of progress got swiftness and power by its 
own momentum. When a man did anything, 
or saw anything, he could say it to others, and 
others could say it to their children. And, 
eventually, he could cut it in stone, write it on 
parchment, print it on paper. When he became 
wise, wisdom did not die with him, but he 
embalmed it, and left it to the world. We are 
the happy tenants of past attainments, and, 
instead of beginning in the deep, deep valley, we 
start from the foothill of our own generation. It 
seems clear that if man had not learned to talk, 
he could never have passed very far beyond 
the childhood of the world. After all has been 
said, the greatness of the human mind is due 
to the tongue — the predecessor of parchments 
and libraries, the instrument of reason ; and to 
language — the outward expression of the inward 
life. 

Words are at once the most familiar and 
mysterious things in the world. A word is a 
counter of the brain — the impalpable taking 
durable and palpable conditions. What a 
unique relation there is between a thought and 
a sentence. Without the sentence the thought 
must lie hidden to all but the thinker. A word 

10 



146 A Little Lower than the Angels. 

is a blending of the brain, heart, mouth, and 
atmosphere in some mystical manner that ut- 
terly defies explanation. The air is a part of 
its clothing ; it rides on aerial tremulations ; 
sound is connected with it, so is enunciation — 
in fact, the whole man, body and spirit, lives 
in his words, if they are truly his. A word is 
a fragment of a soul. What we call the 
" solid shot " of the orator hurled into the com- 
prehension of his hearers, until they recoil and 
capitulate, is as viewless as spirit and as substan- 
tial as marble. In a single word there is occa- 
sionally stored the volition of millenniums of 
progress. Words are the heirlooms of the cul- 
ture and experiences of the races. Old words, 
like old coins, speak of a former currency of 
thought, and by their image and superscription 
lay bare the mental life and progress of those 
who long ago minted them. We take those old 
coins and recast them into new forms, always 
preserving in our etymologies their original 
stamps. So we have the old within the lap of 
the new. Trench beautifully says, " Language 
is the amber in which a thousand precious and 
subtle thoughts have been safely embalmed and 
preserved," Words are breath made vocal — 



The Laryngeal Harp. 147 

unseen and intangible as ether, yet more last- 
ing than the hills. Words are the utterance 
of the whole body ; the organ of speech is used 
by every square inch of the physical man. It 
is the telephone system set up for the use of 
every organ and cell in the human domain. 
Through it the stomach calls for food, the lungs 
for air, the eyes for books, the tongue for water, 
the feet for rest, the hands for the many things 
they crave. As a single man is frequently the 
mouthpiece of a congregation, a state, or a na- 
tion, the larynx is the medium of utterance for 
the entire body. 

The mouth is dedicated to the expression of 
the beautiful and the true. This no one will 
dispute who at the same time owns that the 
Lord made it. God is love and truth, and man 
is normally a minor expression of God. Speech 
stands eternally for love invested with integ- 
rity. Therefore its organs should be noble 
subjects of the heart and brain. He who speaks 
otherwise prostitutes his being. 

In oratory enunciation predominates ; in 
music, tone. Tone is the soul of it — the love of it. 
There is power in tone — the charm of rhythm. 
Tone is ultimated feeling. We detect in the 



148 A Little Lower than the Angels. 

mere cadences of the voice, in its mere modula- 
tions, the presence of anger, sarcasm, tenderness, 
affection, humor, gentleness, pride, logic, an- 
guish. There are the scolding, soothing, cheer- 
ing tones, known independently of words. 
Children and animals tell more by the tone 
than anything else, because they are forms of 
affection and impulse. In thrilling emotions, 
in great suffering or joy, we can not stop for 
words, but deliver ourselves in groans or in 
cries of delight. What a round of experiences 
lie buried in mere sounds ! Each cadence 
contains enough to fill a volume. 

Music is the highest and noblest form of 
phonics. In the perfected life every utterance 
rises into melody. Communication there flows 
out in song. Each group of angels is a choir. 
As life ascends it grows more tuneful. The 
angels sang to the shepherds the annunciation 
of peace to earth. Mary sang in her beatific 
vision — Elizabeth sang. Revelation naturally 
falls into rhapsody. The noblest of the prophe- 
cies are chants. John in his apocalypse heard 
the " voices of harpers harping with their 
harps." Love and wisdom never fall into the 
analytical. All visions point to a day when the 



The Laryngeal Harp. 149 

ascended humanity will speak one language, 
and that pure harmony. When all are high 
enough, all will come into this vocal unity. 
We get a hint of it here. Watch a thousand 
people listening to a succession of sounds at a 
high-class concert. There is the silence of 
love, every nature is open down to the bottom 
of the soul, each receives in the ratio of his 
capacity, each is hearing some fascinating tale ; 
yet from beginning to ending there has not been 
one word uttered. It is pathetic, wonderful, 
what men will do with wood and metal in the 
earnest struggle to materialize their dreams of 
harmony. The harp, the piano, the violoncello, 
the flute, and a hundred other instruments, are 
the planet dug up and set to music, the forests 
hewed into lyrics, the ligaments of animals 
strung to rhythm. " What a piece of work is 
man " to bring out of these dull clods the cap- 
tivating, celestial influences of the Boston Sym- 
phony Concert ! And yet there is thought in 
it. At Alexander's feast Timotheus sits on 
high amid the tuneful choir and sways the 
spirit of the monarch at his will. He carries 
him from the frenzies of the fight to the soft 
breathings of love, from memory to mem- 



150 A Little Lower than the Angels. 

ory, until the king wins his battles o'er again 
and " twice he slays the slain." Each trans- 
formation of the player bears the king on its 
billows from transport to transport. 

We speak of the old masters as thoughtful. 
Some music is light, airy, graceful ; some is 
shallow and empty ; some sets the soul to rock- 
ing on its own infinite abysses. A single 
strain has sometimes buried in it the thought of 
God. Orchestras and choirs are only develop- 
ments of the larynx — the endeavor to breathe 
the concordant spirit in richer, vaster volume 
and complexity. 

4 ' Love took up the harp of Life and smote on all the 
chords with might ; 
Smote the chord of Self, that, trembling, passed in 
music out of sight." 



CHAPTER XI. 
THE LIFE-LINE IN THE PALM. 



The human race would never have become human if it had not 
been for the hand. — Anaxagoras. 

The hands complete the uses of the arms. 
The arms are for the hands. The hands are 
the fruition of the arms. The arms are, in 
their turn, the forthgoing of the soul. There- 
fore the hands are the fruition of the soul. 
They are the soul's tools. They are the soul 
reaching out, fashioning and appropriating the 
planet. The soul moves the nerves, the nerves 
the muscles, the muscles the bones — and the 
framework of the body comes to action. 
Every motion is the result of this remarkable 
indirection. When we see a body in action, 
we know a soul is in action. The feet carry 
the body along — the hands do its bidding. 
The first are the ways of life ; the other, the 
doings by the way. The first are the supports 
of the body ; the other its levers. 
151 



152 A Little Lower than the Angels. 

There is the upper arm — one long bone 
called the humerus. There is the lower arm — 
two small bones called the radius and ulna. 
There is the wrist, with eight tiny bones whose 
sides fit into and play harmoniously against one 
another. The wrist, though broken up into 
several pieces for the purposes of flexibility, is 
bound together so firmly by ligament and mus- 
cles that it is even stronger than if it were 
one solid bone. These congregated, dove-tailed 
creations enable us to give the twists and twirls 
that are of almost momentary occurrence. The 
skilful pitcher of the ball, the swinger of In- 
dian clubs, the deft artificer, bring them con- 
tinually into play. 

The hand has nineteen bones — five in the 
hand proper, three in each finger, two in each 
thumb. On the fingers are hair-like forma- 
tions called nails, placed there for protection 
and stiffening. All these bones are beautifully 
hinged together — certain of them arranged 
like the ball and socket to confer power's of 
perfect adaptation. All are equipped with their 
special dynamic muscles that give them the 
ability to move. These muscles play on the arm 
and hand like the electric motor on the wheels 



The Life-line in the Palm. 153 

of the car — like the steam on the myriad fingers 
of the loom. They make the hand a quick, 
graceful, skilful machine, ever at our bidding, 
and as the muscles are the servants of the soul, 
the soul can teach them to do the finest and 
strongest work, to ply the needle, swing the 
sledge, catch the ball, run the scales, and thrum 
the harp. The fingers do most of the quick, 
light movements, the thumb assisting in hold- 
ing things firmly. This wonderful combination 
of bones, nerves, and flesh is utterly helpless 
without the impelling muscles. Each muscle 
is detailed to an unique use. Every act has its 
individual motor. Some lift the fingers, others 
depress them, others guide them over the keys, 
others answer the trained eyes of the surgeon, 
others poise the chisel, move the brush, and 
push along the pen of genius. 

The similarity of the arm and leg, the hand 
and foot, is striking and instructive. The arm 
is an adapted leg, the hand an adapted foot. 
The arm and hand is a leg and foot turned to 
loftier and more versatile services. The femur 
becomes a humerus, the knee an elbow ; the two 
bones of the leg are carried into a like position 
in the arm ; the ankle becomes a wrist, adding 



154 A Little Lower than the Angels. 

one more bone to its repertory ; the foot a 
hand, taking the same arrangement ; the toes 
more pliable and adaptable fingers. Under 
the development of the mind of man the fore- 
legs of the animal lifted themselves from the 
earth and became new creatures. As man 
raised his soul to God his hands caught the in- 
spiration and ceased to grovel. They clasped 
themselves in adoration, they assumed gentle 
and divine ways, they uttered infinite things 
with the pen, the brush, and the chisel. They 
build ed civilizations — they grasped the hands 
of their fellows with angelic fraternity. 

God's long method of making the hand lends 
that facile instrument triple interest. It sets 
it on a basis that will stand forever. It is the 
patient labor of aeons, of millenniums unre- 
corded. The evolutionist gazes down the cor- 
ridors of time and finds in the dawn of a past 
inconceivable this human utensil slowly taking 
form. Buried in the glebe of a distance that 
antedates man himself he beholds this predes- 
tined power rising into empire. At the bottom 
of the scale is the amoeba, a tiny fragment of 
shapeless jelly — headless, footless, armless. 
When it wishes to seize its food, its body 



The Life-line in the Palm. 155 

lengthens out, moves toward it, flows over it, 
engulfs it, absorbs it. Its whole body is a 
hand. It creates a hand whenever it needs 
one. A hand is extemporized when a hand is 
needed : when not needed, it is not. From this 
starting-point, through periods of time that can 
not be measured by years, but must comprise 
vast ages, or cycles, the hand arose. Its per- 
sistent uses developed and perfected it. It 
passed up into the two-fingered bivalve. Then 
on to the tentacles of the sea anemone, the star- 
fish, and the octopus. Then came the hand of 
the African monkey — almost human. Finally, 
the creation of the human mind — man in God's 
image and likeness. The hand answered to 
the rising intellect and kept pace with its illus- 
trious compeer. God gave man this body — 
this long labor of ages, this concrete result of 
animal ascendency. He set him on the upland 
of that present, gave him this paramount ad- 
vantage, expecting him to augment and im- 
prove the gift ; to take the rude body of the 
beast and hew it into the form of a god ; to 
refine it and train it into the beauty which it 
now has. 

In the courses of this development a day 



156 A Little Loiver than the Angels. 

arrived that was crucial. A point was reached 
where the one road branched into two. And 
the animal had to decide which to take. Here 
there was a parting and a division. Man and 
bird were once apparently a unit. Now, the 
bird took to the air, the man kept to the soil. 
Go back far enough, and everything that is, 
even under the most powerful glass, presents 
the same appearance. Development decides 
the way each will take. They are not alike, 
though they look alike. Man and bird were 
once wrapped in a similar covering. A day came 
when they took different directions ; a choice 
crucial in its bearings, infinite in its unfoldings, 
upon which were suspended the flowering of 
earth and heaven, of a race of divine men, a 
heaven of angels. The bird took wings — the 
man hands. This choice was fatal to the birds, 
for they forfeited the possibility of ever becom- 
ing human. Try to reckon the cost to the bird 
of the choice of the aerial life — this life we 
deem so free and inspiring ! Try to add up 
the immense expense of choosing a wing rather 
than a hand ! The bird's wing has the bones 
of a hand ; it could have had a hand, but it 
waived the right. With that consummate im- 



The Life-line in the Palm. 157 

plement buried in feathers, the use man and 
the higher vertebrates made of it was denied 
the bird forever. When we realize what has 
been won by the growth and versatility of the 
hand, how the very humanities pivot on it, we 
realize what the bird has lost. We cry : " Oh? 
that I had wings like a dove — then would I 
fly away ! " We enviously watch the bird as 
it cuts a free and untraveled way through the 
air, with a song in its heart, and another on the 
breeze ; but we forget that we have a hand — 
an instrument so transcendently nobler and 
more efficient than the bird's wing that any 
comparison fails. 

Consider the significance and epoch-making 
nature of the thumb ! We usually think of 
it as the clumsiest of the fingers. We do not 
apprehend its far-reaching powers of permu- 
tation and accomplishment. The thumb is 
the final, perfecting touch of the hand. It 
takes the relation to the hand that man does to 
the universe — it is the crown and glory of the 
hand. When the thumb was added, divinity 
was added. Cuvier says : " What constitutes 
the hand is the facility of opposing the thumb 
to the fingers so as to seize minute objects — a 



158 A Little Lower than the Angels. 

facility carried to the highest degree of perfec- 
tion in man. The peculiar prehensile power in 
the human hand is chiefly due to the length, 
power, and mobility of the thumb, which can 
be brought into exact opposition to the fin- 
gers, whether separately or grouped together." 
Henry Drummond says "the hand of an Afri- 
can monkey has no thumb." The thumb is 
peculiarly human. Try to do without it and 
see how helpless you will become. Try to 
catch the ball, button the shoe, hold the book, 
write the letter, do any form of manual service, 
and you will suddenly discover the immense 
importance of this seemingly insignificant 
member. The thumb is not simply an addi- 
tional finger, but a finger so disposed as to an- 
tagonize all the other fingers. Therefore its 
efficacy is greater than all the other fingers 
put together. The thumb makes the hand 
truly human. 

The genus Homo takes rank in the classifica- 
tion of mammals as a distinct order, JBimana, in 
consequence of man being the only animal pos- 
sessing two hands. At first we might think 
four hands better, like the monkeys and apes. 
Or many hands better, like the star-fish and the 



The Life-line in the Palm. 159 

octopus. But this is very far from the case. 
It is not the number of implements that makes 
for efficacy, but their quality. None of these 
hands, whether four or many, are adapted to 
the variety and intelligent work that man's 
two hands are. Anaxagoras has wisely re- 
marked that " the race could never have become 
human had it not been for the hand." 

Through the long cycles in which the hand 
grew to finish and potency where has it ar- 
rived ? Has it reached completion ? The an- 
swer might well be in the affirmative. It is 
altogether probable that there will never be a 
more perfect hand than the one we now possess. 
It is likely that the ultimate hand has appeared. 
Why? Has God reached the end of his re- 
sources? Has He done all he can, and rested 
from His labors ? No, not this ; but a leap has 
been taken to another field of progress. The 
work has been passed to us ; we manufacture 
hands better than our own. Evolution has 
leaped from flesh to steel. The hand is a tool 
of the soul — now we have tools of the hand. 
It is a tool within a tool. The flesh went on de- 
veloping until man learned to make better ones 
of iron. Then evolution paused and transferred 



160 A Little Lower than the Angels. 

its labors to this new field. The fatal day for 
the hand came in the discovery of tools and 
machinery. " It was a remarkable era in the 
history of creation when man learned to take 
a club and use it for a hammer, or could pry up 
a stone with a stake — thus adding one more 
lever to the levers of the arm." Now it is no 
longer better flesh, but better steel — a better 
tool. 

Tools are arms multiplied, energized. They 
are extensions of the arms. Hammers are cal- 
lous substitutes for the fist. Knives do the 
work once assigned to the nails. Watch the 
animals, and you will see how easily they wield 
these lancets. The vise and pincers replace 
the fingers and thumb ; they are immensely 
stronger, and never weary of their unrelaxing 
grip. 

Will not the making of tools develop the 
hands still further? No, for tools are no 
longer made with the hands ; they are made 
with the brains. First we make tools ; then 
tools to make tools. Almost everything now is 
made with hands — but with artificial hands. 
The very tools themselves are made with other 
tools. We are making hands infinitely more 



The Life-line in the Palm. 161 

facile than those God has made. " Greater 
things than these shall ye do." We are sup- 
plying the workshops of the earth with million- 
fingered machines, more intricate, enduring, 
and strong than evolution could produce in 
millenniums. Watch the lightning looms of 
our great mills as they weave the fabric. The 
arrest of the hand is not the cessation of evo- 
lution. It is its immense acceleration. 

The hand becomes also a substitute for the 
tongue. We talk with our hands. The ver- 
nacular of the hand is getting more and more 
universal. The mutations and combinations 
that can be made by ten pliable fingers under 
the tuition of the brain are endless. The hand 
speaks with the pen. Language is expressed 
more perfectly and enduringly by the hand than 
by the tongue. Art, painting, and sculpture, 
impossible without the hand, are speech stored 
in the archives of time. We have living among 
us to-day, conversing with us, the rare spirits 
of gone ages. Egypt and Assyria, Greece and 
Rome, the twenty Christian centuries, are here 
because of this power of the hand to utter the 
thought of the mind. The mental effusions of 
great men, from Anaxagoras to Emerson, 
11 



162 A Little Lower than the Angels. 

would lie buried in the ethers which received 
them if the hand had not become a tongue. 

Yet all that has been said is necessarily 
superficial. We now look deeper — to the spirit 
that lies mirrored in the hands. There are 
hands within the hands. There is spirit in 
them — character in them. There is some- 
thing that prompts them to work ; prompts 
them to pray ; something that suggests frater- 
nity and helpfulness. These exquisite furnish- 
ings are as veritable tools of the soul as ham- 
mers and knives. They are as material — as 
actually a part of the soil. They illustrate the 
saying that "Interiors put themselves forth 
through exteriors." The spheres of life find 
special power in the hands, because the hands 
represent the life. The soul concentrates its 
active powers in them. 

The hands have ever been considered the 
powers of the soul. They have ever been 
" the ends of interior correspondence." They 
are outward intimations of inward potentiali- 
ties. Cut off the hands, and, however well the 
inner organs may do their duty, we are physi- 
cally impotent. Let them get motion, and 
everything within us begins at once to find 



The Life-line in the Palm. 163 

expression. Feet and hands carry into effect 
what all the rest hope and live for. In the 
Word all faculties and gifts are expounded by 
the hands. The man is in his hands, and he 
is judged by what they do. They are alive, 
and are brought into motion by their relegated 
offices, their services to the soul. This is why 
the remark has become so common that "A 
man is known by the work of his hands." 
We see him in them because they dramatize his 
character. They take his thought and throw 
it up in genuflections — set it in beautiful im- 
pregnable creations. The constellation of di- 
vine arts is the soul drawn on the field of the 
material — made visible, given color, contour, 
and solidity. It is by the brain and hand that 
man stands preeminently distinguished, for in 
both we see a display of his reason. The 
hands are the brains — for the brains are in 
them. 

Let us be more concrete and definite : the 
hands are the deeds. This fact is continually 
recognized in scriptures and in society. The 
feet are the ivays of life — the hands the doings 
by the way. Lady Macbeth walks the palace 
halls wringing her hands and crying that she 



164 A Little Lower than the Angels. 

can not wash the blood-stains from them. The 
stains are on her life — but her life is in her 
hands. Hamlet says to his guilty mother : 

' ' Leave wringing of your hands : Peace : sit you down 
And let me wring your soul. ' ' 

" Who shall ascend into the hill of the Lord, 
or who shall stand in His holy place ? He 
that hath clean hands, and a pure heart." The 
clean hands are clean because of the clean 
heart. We are continually commanded to wash 
our hands — that is, to wash our lives. We 
are told to bind the law upon our hands — to 
keep them true. Cutting off the hands is 
symbolic of cutting off the deeds. The man 
with the withered right arm is the man with 
the withered power to do. How the very 
character lies mapped in the hands ! We are 
told that an angel can read from the hand 
the entire life of man ; that the whole record 
is legibly written there ; that what he has 
thought and done from first to last has crys- 
tallized into this divine palmistry. Character 
in the hands ! Character carving them, shap- 
ing them ; drawing significant, informing lines ; 
adding touches indescribable ! The hands of 



The Life-line in the Palm. 165 

age ! the scarred and battered hands of toil ! 
hands that have borne the heat and burden of 
a long and tragic pilgrimage ! withered, faith- 
ful hands seamed with sacrificial services ! 
"beautiful, beautiful hands, they're neither 
white nor small ! " 

"Does its beauty refine as its pulses grow calm, 
Or as Sorrow has crossed the Life-line in the palm ? ' ' 

The hands mean sympathy and power. The 
finest sensibilities are in the ends of the fingers. 
Observe how the papillae arrrange themselves 
in exquisite spiral sweeps. When we desire to 
extend help or sympathy, we involuntarily 
stretch forth the hands. Here comes the uni- 
versal custom of shaking the hands, or press- 
ing them when we meet. We ask the hand in 
marriage — that closest of human relations. 
We lay hands on persons set apart for special 
services as a symbol of communicated power 
and responsibility. 

"Hand 

Clasps hand, eye lights eye in good friendship, 

And great hearts expand, 

And grow one in the sense of this world's life." 

The hand of God ! " From the lips of the 
prophet an old and beautiful story was told to 



166 A Little Lower than the Angels. 

the children of the earth — how God with His 
own hands gathered the Bactrian dust, modeled 
it, breathed upon it, and it became a living 
soul. Later the insight of the Hebrew poet 
taught man a deeper lesson. He saw that the 
Creator had different kinds of hands, and dif- 
ferent ways of modeling " ; that those hands 
were His love and wisdom extended to bless ; 
that His right hand was the implement of His 
Omnipotence ; that His hands were His provi- 
dences. " Thou openest Thine hand and satis- 
fieth the desire of every living thing." " The 
Lord hath made bare His holy arm." " My 
times are in Thy hands." His hands are the 
symbols of care and strength. He continually 
laid them upon the sick and healed them. 
" Underneath are the everlasting arms." 

''Thou layest thy fingers on the lips of Care, 
And they complain no more. ' ' 

The shoulders, arms, and hands of the Great- 
est Man figure the blended powers of the as- 
cended humanities. They gather up the ten- 
derness and strength of God — and of man 
through God. They are the immense, yet 
delicate, attribute of the Immortal affection. 



The Life-line in the Palm. 167 

1 All that is real remaineth, 

And fadeth never : 
The hand which upholdeth it now sustaineth 
The soul forever. ' ' 



XII. 
FINIS. 



And now at foot 
Of heaven's ascent they lift their feet. — Milton. 

The feet are the terminals of life — and of the 
physical life. They are that upon which the 
body rests when standing ; therefore the pedes- 
tal of the soul. They are the medium between 
the soul and the earth. They make connec- 
tions with the physical universe and turn on 
the currents of life. If man could not thus 
conclude himself, he would be like the electric 
conduction without an avenue of union. The 
conduction must find a complete circuit before 
it can even begin to carry the current. So 
man, without this vital relation to the soil, 
could not even begin to live. 

The Latin equivalent is pedis, and many 
words radiate from this stem. The pediment 
of a monument is its foot. A pedestrian is 
168 



Finis. 169 

one who moves on his feet. Without these, 
there could be no monument, no motion. 
Various footed animals get their technical 
identification from the number of their feet. 
There is the biped, the quadruped, the centi- 
ped, the octopod, the polypus, etc. Various 
movements are indicated by the expansion of 
the same radical, such as impetus, expede ; ex- 
pedite, impel, etc. The foot is a basic, solid, 
final epithet. The foothills of the mountains 
are that upon which the mountains stand. 
A " footing " is a general plane or base upon 
which men and things rest. Looking back 
still farther, to the risings of the word out of 
.the virgin Sanskrit, we find its scope more 
sweeping and inclusive. The radix pad con- 
veys not only the idea of standing, but also of 
motion. It is the idea of falling, of going for- 
ward. And if we observe closely, we shall 
see that walking is a literal falling, each for- 
ward putting of the foot saving us from the in- 
evitable catastrophe. To stand and to fall are 
the intrinsic properties of the word. 

The feet, then, are the horizon of the physi- 
cal life, the nether circumference of the spirit. 
Mobility and solidity are in them. They are 



170 A Little Lower than the Angels. 

both the supports and conveyances of the body. 
They are created engines for any standing we 
may will, or any walking we may determine. 
They are the ways of life — the hands being 
the acts by the way. Motion and guidance cen- 
ter in them. Without them, brain and heart 
could find no avenue of expression. We should 
be obliged to store our energies, waiting for op- 
portune feet and hands to release them. The 
intellectual life must be literally dead without 
them — so the spiritual. Dead because inactive. 
Without them we are baseless, and in the air. 
Lightning is diffused in spaces until it finds an 
avenue through the earth ; then it acts with im- 
mense velocity, precision, and power. So the 
spirit without cosmic footing must be nebulous 
and ineffective. The planets are the feet of the 
heavens, without which there could be no heav- 
ens. By a series of magnificent discrete steps 
from God to rock, to verdure, to animal, to 
man, the universe finds its way back again into 
heaven — to God from whom it came. The 
earth is the pediment of heaven by indirection. 
From rock, to sea, to triple atmospheres, the 
infinities are borne down and find their base on 
the Lord's « footstool." 



Finis. 171 

Here lies couched the great and all-inclusive 
doctrine of uses. Uses are simply ultimation, 
fulfilment. Without uses there can be no real- 
ity. Without accomplishment everything is an 
illusion. Without footing life is but a " castle 
in the air." Unless goodness and truth and 
capability find expression, they do not exist. 
They are the " baseless fabric of a dream," a 
beautiful idea, a pleasing fancy. 

The account of life is located in those drama- 
tic parts of man — face, hands, feet. But it is 
easily seen that the most important of the three 
are the feet. The latter place the entire man 
on a foundation, and render the face and hands 
effective. The feet are not so much concerned 
in doing, as in carrying the body where it can 
do. They make the deliveries of life (face, 
hands, feet) possible. Standing in the dust, as 
they do, they are nevertheless infinitely pre- 
cious. In them life finds solution. Any fail- 
ure of life's forthgoings is a failure of the man. 
Without a tongue thought is stultified. With- 
out an expressive face much of the man is lost. 
Without hands there is much individual sup- 
pression. Without feet all these mentioned are 
pinned to one spot, and instead of our going to 



172 A Little Lower than the Angels. 

the world, the world must come to us. So far 
as any of these are incapacitated, dulled, unre- 
sponsive, destitute of carrying powers — life is, 
in that precise ratio, unrealized. What is 
expressionless is not. And according to its 
faintness of expression it is weakened. Any 
insulation hinders the mind and the spirit in 
the exact proportion of that insulation. To be 
vulnerable here is to be vulnerable everywhere. 
If the city has a breach in its walls, it is lost, 
however grand its buildings, or however heroic 
its dwellers. The classic story of Achilles, who 
had a weak spot in his heel, is a pat illustra- 
tion. He represents beauty, strength, valor, 
all impregnable and panoplied, but in that one 
little spot. The heel is symbolic of that part 
of us which is most outward, worldly, physical, 
through which the inner and higher parts find 
expression and use ; that part which is the 
basis and containent of the mind and heart. 
The arrow of the foe finds lodgment here and 
great Achilles falls. How many of us are 
unshielded there? and, this failing, the whole 
man fails. When this capitulates, the citadel 
is taken. When Titus pierces the outer gates 
of Jerusalem, his profane foot touches the holy 



Finis. 173 

of holies within the temple itself. How very 
many are allowing the cares and allurements of 
the world to prostitute and sully the beautiful 
within ! 

That the whole life is in the feet is reiterated 
throughout the Word. " Simon Peter saith 
unto him, Lord, not my feet only, but also my 
hands and my head." " Jesus saith unto him, 
He that is washed needeth not save to wash his 
feet, but is clean every whit." We dream of 
great positions, great names, great services, 
failing to realize that the prime and vital 
services are in the lowliest parts of things. 
The Lord girded Himself and washed — not the 
heads or hands of His disciples, but their feet. 
When He came into the earthly life, He de- 
scended to its lowliest walks. He began in 
the deepest stratum of human society, and, 
saving that, saved all. He brought the king- 
dom of God first to the " footstool " of His cre- 
ation — " Thy kingdom come thy will be done 
on earth." If the heart and mind are not in 
the body — if the outer life is not pure and 
true and spiritual — the whole being is corrupt. 
What the outer life is, the man is. If religion 
is not first in the daily life, it cannot be prop- 



174 A Little Lower than the Angels, 

erly called religion. The Master dramatized 
the beauty of His soul in His earthly acts. 
Heaven was in His face, His hands, His feet, His 
words. " How beautiful upon the mountains 
are the feet of him that bringeth good tidings." 

To walk with God, then, is to make the low- 
liest things divine. It is to make the most 
menial acts sweet, pure, full of brightness and 
gladness. To walk is to do. To walk with 
God is to do with God, to keep step with him, 
to tread the same path. It is to have his gen- 
erous motives and tender interests. It is to 
move with him gladly, not reluctantly. It is 
to go to life's privileges and tasks with a 
dynamic joy that transfigures them into the 
works of angels. It is to feel an eager haste to 
self-immolation. It is to steadfastly, voluntarily, 
set our faces even to the cross. Not for the 
sake of a kingdom — but for the divine inevita- 
ble expression of ourselves. 

In one sense all men walk with God. 
" Surely the wrath of man shall praise thee." 
This great civilization is moving up a divine 
plane originated in the councils of heaven ; it 
is following the " pattern in the mount " un- 
wittingly. By immense outlay of suffering and 



Finis. 175 

toil the race is doing the will of God with com- 
mingled motives and aspirations. Behind the 
master-spirit of acquisitiveness is the shaping, 
guiding Hand. How little would many of us 
do were it not for the pressing need of bread 
and shelter, for the love of name and fame and 
rulership ! How many, many, do that which 
they would not were it possible for them to find 
an escape. How we chafe, like a galley-slave 
at the oar ! Not like the pebble on the beach, 
moving aimlessly, now up and now down, but, 
with God as unseen helmsman, making for 
some glorious port. 

In one sense we all walk with God, for with- 
out Him there could be no walking at all. 
" For in Him we live, and move, and have our 
being." Yet how many walk with Him as the 
reluctant and whining child goes to school, 
drawn thither by the loving, inexorable father's 
hand. Our troubles have been called, "God 
dragging us." Do we not tread the ways of life 
with often bitterness, and complainings, and 
inky doubts ? We go with God ; but so un- 
comfortably. We go with God because we 
must. We go stubbornly, pulling at his 
hand, and crying to be released. To walk 



176 A Little Lower than the Angels. 

truly with him is to bear our toils, and doubts, 
and sufferings with the resolute calm temper of 
the Master. He was a " man of sorrows and 
acquainted with grief," yet whoever saw a 
brighter face ? And all His acts were volun- 
tary and joyful. He even went to Calvary with 
a song — a " song in the night." He came over 
the rugged mountains with light, glad feet that 
made those weary heights beautiful with their 
touch. The mountains are hard to climb, they 
stipulate a struggle with gravitation ; yet they 
repose in the elevated, serene regions of peace 
and light. 

" Keeping the feet in the right paths " is 
keeping the life there — for the life follows the 
feet. The feet are obedience — the love of go- 
ing in the way of the commandments. To sit 
at the Lord's feet is to love to follow Him to 
the uttermost. When "they came and held 
Him by the feet" they felt this thrilling im- 
pulse. To "keep our feet" is to maintain 
proper conduct. " Keep thy foot when thou 
goest to the house of God." " Hold up my 
goings in thy paths, that my footsteps slip not." 
When we ask not to be allowed to " stray from 
right paths," we ask to have our lives kept true 



Finis. 177 

and right. The feet determine the courses of 
life — the direction they point the whole man 
moves. Up or down, through vales or over 
hills, in straight ways or along interminable 
windings — the man follows his feet. The axis 
of the foot is at right angles to the leg, indicat- 
ing the straight forward movement. To " put 
the best foot forward " is to follow the best that 
is in us. It is to bring into requisition our 
highest, noblest resources. We discover, then, 
the critical, intrinsic influences of the foot. 
Where the feet go, the brain, face, heart, hand, 
voice — entire personality goes. Where the feet 
go, these find their activities. How necessary, 
then, that the feet be right ! 

Paul speaks of the complaint of the foot that 
its position and services are menial. " If the 
foot shall say, Because I am not the hand, I 
am not of the body ; is it therefore not of the 
body ? " Yes, it is the body gathered up into 
a single member, finding utterance and power 
just there. It is the motion and direction of 
the body. To keep the feet right is to keep all 
the other members of the body right. It is to 
have a right hand, eye, voice, look. It is to 
walk in the light, as the feet are in the light. 



178 A Little Lower than the Angels. 

Swedenborg says that the sense of touch in the 
soles of the feet communicates more immedi- 
ately with the cerebrum (the thinking region) 
than any other portion of the body, indicating 
that the feet have a closer relation to the mind 
as the determining forces of the entire man. 
" Thy Word is a lamp [light] unto my feet." 
The feet symbolize the subjugation of every- 
thing low and base. What we stand upon we 
conquer. The final stamp of the will lies in 
them. When the Saviour said, " All power is 
given unto me in heaven and in earth," He had 
" put all things in subjection under His feet." 
He had conquered Himself, defeated hell, and 
redeemed man. When He " set his right foot 
upon the sea, and His left foot on the earth, 
. . . and sware by Him that liveth forever 
and ever . . . that there should be time 
no longer," he had universal dominion. We 
get hints of this in the instinctive tendency of 
people to lift the foot and bring it down hard 
as a correspondence of determination and 
power. It was the custom of ancient victors 
to set their feet on the necks of defeated mon- 
archs as a symbol of complete triumph. There 
is little doubt but this dim and sinuous thread 



Finis. 179 

of correspondence, running through the ages 
from the most ancient times, found survival in 
this act. The powers of self-conquest reside in 
the feet. We think and speak spontaneously 
of treading on our unworthy instincts. 

The gait, postures, and bearing of the body 
become, then, but spiritual results. They start 
in the deepest recesses of the soul, and find 
realization in the fringes of being. The atti- 
tudes of the body become a striking and 
intensely interesting exposition of spiritual and 
mental states. Every light and shade, every 
word and tone, every motion of hands, feet, 
face, is a soul in action — a soul writing its 
autobiography. Every movement is an unfold- 
ing of the deep within. When we realize this, 
what a drama life becomes ! Not common the- 
atricals — not simulated and automatic, some- 
thing entirely apart from the actors — but dra- 
matics that thrill with their tremendous veri- 
ties ; dramatics that are fundamental and 
instructive. Human society flows and quivers 
by us swifter and more incessant than the rush- 
ing biograph. There is the greatest temptation 
to stand and watch it as mere spectators. But 
God will not let us do that — we are a part of 



180 A Little Lower than the Angels. 

the movement, and must flow with it. We find 
ourselves both auditor and actor. Without this 
vast theatre of nature, life could not be ulti- 
mated or interpreted ; in short, it could not be 
at all. There is no other way to live. From 
within out, culminating in action and color, is 
life's very definition. This vivid outer play 
of the invisible and mystic within is the only 
life that is or ever can be. 

The undying, universal love of expression 
attends eveiy thing that breathes. Even the 
leaves of the trees rustle and whisper. The 
flowers utter themselves in hue and fragrance. 
The clam betrays his hiding place in the black 
mud of the bay by the clear stream of sea- 
water he throws through the doorway of his 
humble dwelling. The cricket chirps, the frog 
peeps, the owl hoots, the lion roars, the cattle 
low, the birds sing. The infant cries five min- 
utes after its birth, and inaugurates the wonder- 
ful expression of races, from the stone age, up 
through monuments, architecture, painting, mu- 
sic, literature, and oratory, to the crowning 
industrial and mechanical creations of the 
twentieth century. From earliest times man 
has etched his individuality in durable and 



Finis. 181 

readable substances. The " footstool " of the 
Lord has become a running biography of the 
Ifaximus Homo. 

"All the world's a stage, 
And all the men and women merely players : 
They have their exits and their entrances ; 
And one man in his time plays many parts, 
His acts being seven ages. ' ' 



-^v^^c-<<^- 



EPILOGISM. 



— ^<^^^- < 



XIII. 

THE WONDROUS INTERCHANGE. 



I see in part 
That all, as in some piece of art, 
Is toil cooperant to some end. — In Memoriam. 

The study of the human form is central 
among studies. Unbounded treasure will re- 
pay search along these thrilling, all-inclusive 
lines. The human form sets the model for the 
universe in its mighty sweep from God to God. 
Everything aspires to His image throughout 
the entire creation. The cosmos is but an 
adumbration of this mystical, infinite struc- 
ture. Physiology is full of acknowledgment 
of the remarkable adaptation of the whole, and 
every separate part of the whole, to the great 
Prototype. As knowledge advances and we 
get deeper glimpses into the Infinite Order, 
this will be seen more clearly. The subject 
will enlarge the knowledge of the soul, of the 
material universe, of the superstructure of the 
185 



186 A Little Lower than the Angels. 

heavens. It alone can formulate the laws of 
true life. 

Crystallized in a sentence, it is the divine 
interchange of myriad parts, with a mutual, 
beneficent result in view, that constitutes the 
definition of the Human Form. It is each 
working together for the love of each, and for 
the love of the whole. It is the fundamental 
principle of cooperation, threading and binding 
all that is ; the true socialism that, as evolution 
advances, will possess earth and heaven. Mu- 
tual, spontaneous responsiveness, with a great 
ideal in view, is the word. It is the joyful 
liquidation of common debts and reciprocities 
set to eternal harmonies. 

Let us step from nature up to man. From 
the lowest round of the ladder this altruistic 
ideal has prevailed, and no single inch of pro- 
gress has been made without it. Nothing, 
nothing ever has or can succeed without co- 
operation. In nature the interdependence of 
part with part is unalterably established. The 
whole system of things, from top to bottom, is 
an uninterrupted series of reciprocities. King- 
dom answers kingdom, organ organ, cell cell, 
atom atom. The alternating law of action and 



The Wondrous Interchange. 187 

reaction is everywhere discovered, from the 
minutest unicellular tissue, to the redeemed and 
perfected humanity in heaven. There is the 
" reciprocal sea," the flux and ebb of the tides, 
the undulations of light and darkness. 

"Sweet interchange 
Of hill and valley, rills, woods, and plains. ' ' 

With the verdure the law is beautifully ap- 
parent. The flowers club together for mutual 
advancement. The workmen's unions find 
their duplicates here. Each separate depart- 
ment of a rose must do its whole duty or there 
is blight and arrest. The thistle and the sun- 
flower are cooperating communities of flowers. 
They are towns or cities grouped for mutual 
protection and profit. There are advanced 
and brotherly alliances with other kingdoms 
than their own. They strike their roots into 
the soil as into the bosom of love — and the 
rock and the plant celebrate their bridal. They 
help each other, for each has what the other has 
not. They open their hearts to the sun and, 
over the spaces of a hundred million miles, 
fraternal hands are clasped. They woo the 
passing winds and send their messages on these 



188 A Little Lower than the Angels. 

light wings. They press on more boldly and 
enlist the insects in their services. They can- 
not move, being fixed in the soil, and the ani- 
mal moves for them. Inducements of the 
most attractive nature are held out. The ban- 
quet of nectar is spread for the bee and the 
butterfly — and in return the bee and the butter- 
fly carry the fertilizing pollen, thus officiating 
at the wedding of the flowers. They fling out 
their bright banners as if to say, " Honey here 
to-day." They breathe their incense on the air 
as a delicious guide. The accommodating 
winds bear the perfume, and float the tiny 
parachutes that contain the seed destined for 
some distant plot of earth. The very birds 
and brooks lend a willing hand. By certain 
mutualities the vegetable becomes animal. It 
steps from its own kingdom to the one above 
it. It is on its way to heaven, which, by a 
series of discrete steps, through ineffable reci- 
procities, it will one day reach. The vegetable 
with its piercing roots breaks up and lifts up 
the soil, the brute in its turn carrying the mat- 
ter upward ; the immortal spirit of man trans- 
muting all into brain, into heart, into the po- 
tent invisibilities that crown and complete. 



The Wondrous Interchange. 189 

Human society is catching this unique idea. 
We are beginning to see that a stable and en- 
during humanity can be built up in no other 
manner. Federation is in the air, and is daily 
gathering volume. From a withering, destruc- 
tive individualism the race is moving up the 
plane of social evolution. From individual, 
family, and interstate alliances it is passing to 
the " Parliament of man, the Federation of the 
world." By brotherly returns and entertain- 
ment of great ends there will some day even- 
tuate a united group of nations — in God's mind 
from the beginning. The State is but a collec- 
tion of families, the nation but a collection of 
States, and the world but a group of nations. 
If cooperation is good between persons, if it is 
good in families, it is good in the world — for 
the world is the family of the Father God. 
The present commercial alliances, the reciproci- 
ties between countries, the imminent federation 
of everything industrial, educational, ecclesi- 
astical — are an indication of the spirit of the 
times, the prophecy of the near domination of 
this grand and divine instinct. It is the pat- 
tern in the Mount at last comprehended and 
used. It is that which lies at the heart of 



190 A Little Lower than the Angels. 

creation flowering forth into living, tangible 
utilities. 

In us this principle is discovered in its 
greatest perfection. For we are the gathered 
universe, the last inclusive creation, a tran- 
scription of all that has gone before — a work- 
ing model of what God is, what heaven is, 
what the universe is. Here are myriad-organ- 
ized interdependencies, a great social inter- 
change, finding the most delicate shadings and 
adaptations. Here is a little universe within 
the universe, a microscopic world within the 
vaster one. Study thyself and thou wilt find 
the secret of all that has been or will be. God 
has told us all that we can wish to know by 
His human inscriptions. " The greatest study 
of mankind is man." A hundred cottages in 
a row will never make a palace. Why is the 
palace so distinct and effective ? Not the num- 
ber of rooms, for they may be fewer. Not their 
differences in size and hue and shape. Not 
their furnishings and uses. It is this — the 
palace is a cooperative institution instead of 
many distinct minor institutions. It is that 
all the departments are for the whole. It is that 
each department is different from any other, 



The Wondrous Interchange. 191 

has different purposes and uses, each adapted 
to the other, each shading into the other, and 
each operating, not only for the good of each, 
but for a harmonious and beautiful structure. 
What makes a city a city ? Not its numerous 
buildings, but its interesting variety, centered in 
a useful and symmetrical unity. Any building, 
business, person, that does not lend itself to this 
unit idea is a vampire and an intrusion. So, 
in the human body, living side by side, is a 
vast democracy of unicellular artizans, each in- 
spired with a love for the prosperity of the 
whole. 

Therefore, coming, as we do, out of the past, 
as a product of the past, — and being built for 
the future, as the vessel is for the ocean, as the 
bird is for the air, — we must be finely related 
and poised to our whole circumference, to what 
is above, below, or on either hand. Our en- 
vironment is the universe — the universe is in 
us — it is without us, and we are a part of its 
composition and conformity. We are the rocks 
through the ministries of the verdure and of 
the animal that eats the verdure. By these 
transforming agencies the rocks become nutri- 
tive. Some philosopher has said, "Man is 



192 A Little Lower than the Angels. 

what he eats." It is almost humiliating to 
realize how utterly dependent man is on what 
is below him. How potatoes, and wheat, and 
eggs, and meat are his daily necessity. But 
when we learn that these are but the vessels 
that bear the Lord's own life to us, the feeling 
of humiliation ceases. We are here, ensphered 
by soil and sea, by sun and atmospheres, the 
nearest and remotest perfectly shaded to our 
powers of reception. 

Another word should be said. We are at- 
tuned not only to what we see and touch, but 
to an unseen region at our feet and an unseen 
region beyond telescope or camera. This is 
not all — we are adjusted to heaven and hell. 
"Angels now are hovering round us, unper- 
ceived they mix the throng." Our deepest 
promptings are invisible ; our finest alterna- 
tions are something that nine out of ten of us 
do not even remotely fancy as existing. We 
are " spirit, fire, and dew." We are uncon- 
sciously related to redeemed and ascended 
societies composed of the elect of all the ages 
of the past. We are more finely related to 
them, they sway us with surer power, than the 
world about us we can touch and see. The 



The Wondrous Interchange. 193 

pull of these upper spheres on the soul is 
sometimes irresistible, and outdoes gravitation. 
We have a grip on the verities we call immor- 
tal beyond the declarations of the most pro- 
phetic. We call this an age of materialism, but 
it is only apparent. Men and women never 
lived so fully in the spirit ; they never so 
fully, though indirectly, made acknowledg- 
ment. What we call the " moral force " is in 
politics, industry, education, as never before, 
and is always reckoned with. 

There are the dual and triple commutations 
within us. There are the affinities and Mend- 
ings of the three graces that make the man. 
Body, mind, and heart intermingle with a fra- 
ternity passing comprehension. The contact of 
the body and the spirit cannot be characterized 
by any known symbols. The meeting is so 
consummate that the argus eye of science, the 
penetrable vision of the seer, fails to find a par- 
tition line. The body is the home of the spirit 
and the spirit interweaves itself into every 
fibril so finely that matter and soul become 
indistinguishable one from the other. The 
responsiveness of each to the other is faultless. 
The discrete link that binds them is the " miss- 
13 



194 A Little Lower than the Angels. 

ing link/' not because it is not there, but be- 
cause it is undiscoverable by any power of 
man. The body is the expression of the spirit, 
its faithful reporter, its pedestal and ultimation. 
It is the cosmos of the spiritual man. It is the 
spirit's hands, feet, and tongue. The mind is 
the lamp of the body, the lamp of the soul. 
Its illuminating beams make the whole trans- 
lucent. By it the whole is transfigured. And 
the heart suffuses and warms all with its affec- 
tions. The immolations of each for each, and 
for the whole, is the health and happiness of 
each, and the sanity and symmetry of the entire 
structure. 

Let us now consider Man as a unity in 
variety poised and aimed to a divine end. An 
infinite diversity of parts is builded into a 
structure so economic that to remove a single 
item, to alter a single atom or faculty by the 
finest possible shading, would derange and mar 
the whole. Nothing is precisely alike, no cell 
or fibril identical. Taken separately, with the 
idea of cooperation omitted, we contemplate 
not a man, but the fragment of a man — some- 
thing as yet meaningless, inexplicable ; as the 
three kingdoms of nature would be if consid- 



The Wondrous Interchange. 195 

erecl separately ; as the worlds would be minus 
their crowning and completing heavens. We 
cannot do this with any degree of reason or 
profit. If we try we grope in midnight, we 
are in a winter that will have no vernal awak- 
ening. We must realize the variety in the 
unity, we must traverse all the avenues of light 
through the entire domain. If we do not per- 
ceive the subtle blending of spirit and clay, we 
perceive nothing really comprehensible. Here 
is the barrier where the mere physiologist has 
to pause. It is his insoluble perplexity. He 
must see a complete mansion graced with its 
incorporeal inhabitant. He must see the ex- 
quisite order, room added to room, organ to 
organ, faculty to faculty, with the light of a 
dominating mind, the glow of a dominating 
love, streaming from cellar to attic. He must 
hear the footsteps of God resounding through 
every corridor, and recognize a federated unity 
linked by divine and inseparable bonds. He 
must see that the w T arp, the woof, the hue, the 
figure, the fashion of the whole can be consid- 
ered only as a unit. 

No two portions of man can perform the 
same use in the same way, any more than they 



196 A Little Lower than the Angels. 

can occupy the same place at the same time. 
Each part is imbued with a similar spirit and 
has a similar purpose — the good of each, for 
the sake of the good of the whole. Each toils 
not for itself; yet in its sacrificial efforts for 
each, and for the Avhole, it toils for itself most 
effectively. Its unselfishness is its sanity and 
its joy. The good of the whole is the high- 
est good of each, and all pull together with 
singleness of aim. This idea is now taking 
possession of society. It is being realized 
that an impoverished and selfish member of 
society suffers — but that this is not the worst 
of it. The worst of it is that every other 
member suffers — and the whole society suffers. 
Society has a blotch on it ; it becomes ineffec- 
tive, weak, pregnable. As an inflamed eye 
makes darkness for hands, feet, the entire man. 
As an inflamed nerve sends the fiery demons 
everywhere in the body, even to the mind and 
the heart. As the sapping of the energies of 
an organ like the heart or the lungs robs the 
whole body of elasticity. As the maiming of 
the foot that lives in the dust fetters the eye 
and holds it to circumscribed limits. It must 
have a healthy foot if it is to visit new scenes 



The Wondrous Interchange. 197 

and feast itself anew on beautiful images. It 
is a scientific aphorism that the swerving of the 
minutest planet of the universe a hairVbreadth 
from its assigned orbit thrills every sun and 
satellite of the system. Its waves of discord 
touch the shores of the unknown. 

There is, then, a divine and lawful selfish- 
ness. Each must labor for itself so far as to 
appropriate that which others have labored to 
give it, else those others' efforts will be vain 
and its own ability to that extent impaired. 
It must consider itself enough to appropriate 
its precise portion — no more and no less. It 
must have the spirit of acquisitiveness enough 
to do the best for itself, that it may do the best 
for each and all. Its aim must be altruistic, 
while its immediate act must be individual. 
It must honor the attempt of each to give it its 
proper sustenance ; it must honor each enough 
to take only what it needs — more than enough 
would be as illegal and injurious as less than 
enough. It must stand in its own strength, 
yet realizing that its strength is the gift of each 
and all. As the whole body is impoverished 
or energized each part is impoverished and ener- 
gized in a graduated ratio. We must make the 



198 A Little Loiver than the Angels. 

most of ourselves in the world, that we may 
make the world most, and each inhabitant 
most. We must be the most perfect individual 
possible, that the collective individual, the 
family, the nation, the race, may be most per- 
fect. This is the status of heaven — the as- 
cended, completed humanity — the " redeemed 
form of man." In heaven there is an indi- 
vidualism that seeks the highest for itself for 
the purpose of lifting all to the highest. It is 
an unselfish selfishness. The aim is infinite — 
the act circumscribed. The ancient idea of a 
select company of over-lords, and a vast world 
of serfs, no longer holds. An equality that 
makes one as essential as the other, as honored 
as the other, as happy as the other, with each 
wonderfully different, holding an unique posi- 
tion, has superseded it. A divine individual- 
ism for the sake of a divine democracy now 
occupies the hopes and aims of the highest 
thinkers. 

When this is perfectly true of the body, there 
will be a perfectly healthy and happy body — so 
much so that one will not be conscious of a 
body. It is disease that makes the body 
obtrusive, and continually in one's thought. 



The Wondrous Interchange. 199 

A peace and melody follows perfect health 
that sinks everything but gladness out of 
sight. Adaptation to environment is so fine 
that the connection is not recognized. Disease 
is the result of some single organ or cell failing 
to perform its whole duty to itself, and thus to 
the whole structure. When it toils for itself 
alone, when it seizes more than its share, or 
inertly absorbs less ; when it does less than it 
ought, and casts its own duties on another, 
relieving or burdening another beyond its 
healthful exercises, the entire system is de- 
ranged. When it takes more than it needs, 
it is absorbing the needs of another, contrib- 
uting to that other's impoverishment, and 
itself suffers from engorgement, surfeit, con- 
gestion. At the same time the whole stream 
of life is tainted, agitated, weakened, carrying 
its imposed poison through brain and nerves. 
In a word, symmetry of action and interaction 
is health — the lack of it is disease. 

Here lies the secret of the difficulties of 
human society. There is surfeit and squalor 
on every hand. There is impoverishment and 
surplus, congestion and depletion, until the 
"whole head is sick and the whole heart faint. " 



200 A Little Loiver than the Angels. 

The redemption of society is revealed in the 
mutual interchanges of the human form. The 
pattern is in the Mount, waiting to be oper- 
ated among men. The remedy is as old as 
humanity itself. How blind we are that we 
have not discovered it before! We make hu- 
man and empty designs, all-remedial inven- 
tions that become the fad of the hour and fail 
as others have failed before them. The statute- 
books are laden with the wrecks of Utopian 
ideas that have turned out anything but 
Utopian. From Sir Thomas Moore to Edward 
Bellamy, the result has ever been the same. 
We must return to God and find the solution 
written in characters as indelible and living as 
the body itself. Here is the infinite scheme 
for us to follow. It has been invented by the 
Infinite Mind that built society and knows 
what the ultimate socialism is to be. Feder- 
ation is daily attaining vaster proportions. 
Cooperation is the idea of federation. The 
swift aggregation of enterprises under a single 
governing head, threaded by a single vital 
principle, mutual profit and economy, is in 
the right direction, and is, as the poet has 
said, " Some far-off divine event to which the 



The Wondrous Interchange. 201 

whole creation moves." Though at present 
animated by greed, and aimed for the profit 
of the few at the expense of the many, it 
will extend until the whole world is included 
in its sweep, and the whole race shall partici- 
pate in its blessings. 

"Where single forces faile ; conjoyned may gaine. " 
— Faerie Queene. 



(Sob Winning TUs. 

BY 

REV. CLARENCE LATHBURY. 

Price, 40 cents. 



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The Church's One Foundation. 



REV. B. F. BARRETT. 
Price, 75 cents. 



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ftbe Bible Stubent'8 Series 

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